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A Report from Tehran

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Shahram Kholdi, a graduate student in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Manchester, has extensive contacts in Iran, and he just shared the following email report with academic colleagues on a private listserv. He's allowed it to be posted publicly with references to sources excised:

According to my [contacts]:

1. Yesterday, XXXXX watched from their apartment window a clash between the police and the construction site workers at the Towhid Tunnel (which is predicted to connect Parkway to Nawab). The police tried to make a shortcut to reach the protesters, and ambush them on the other side, when the workers told them they would not let them through this led to a clash between the workers and the police. The workers used all types of construction machineries to halt the police from shovels to bricks and the cement truck. The situation between the workers, mostly from Lor and Turkish background, caused some of the protesters to rush to the aid of the workers.

2. Most Azad University branches in Tehran have declared two exam dates for each subject for the end of the year and have stated that the students can take whichever that is most convenient for them. Pro-Ahmadinejad students and baseej have interpreted the move as a pro-Musavi action by Jasbi that allows pro-Musavi students to conveniently distribute their forces between the two dates and fill the streets. Pro-Musavi students have intrepreted this move as an action by the Intelligence elements to identify the students, making them Setareh-dar, as they will easily identify who has been absent when.

3. Tehran is full of checkpoints but the police are inconsistent due to personal taste of the commanders. The checkpoints are active at night. They mostly look for counter anti-riot gears, such as masks, wipes and first aid boxes, but it also seems that they also look for aatellite dish equipments. Most "illegal" satellite dish technicians have gone underground as they know that the police are after them. One case reported to XXXXX is exemplary in showing that there is a division in the ranks of the police, which in a way is a good sign. Two close friends of XXXXX, one of them a member of Musavi campaign, were stopped at a check point and their car trunk was full of posters and green bands. The constables took them to their immediate commander who confiscated all the material and ordered them to be arrested. However, as they were taken to another check point where the district commander was, he overruled his superiors and ordered XXXXX to be released and also oversaw the return of the posters and other pro-Musavi material to them. As they got in the car to leave the station, the district commander told them that they have to be extra careful and told them Movaffagh Bashid (meaning roughly "good luck").

4. One of XXXXX's friends, a [POSITION DELETED] at Martyr Foundation hospitals, told YYYYY that about fifty young people brought to their hospitals had head injuries from rubber bullets. Half a dozen of them passed away before getting to the operation theatre. XXXXX asked him/her to contact me, but he/she believes....people who are close to Karrubi family...are under surveillance.

5: The Internet speed has dramatically increased and that is why I was able to have a full two hour hearty uninterrupted talk with XXXXX.

6. A XXXXX whose equipment was confiscated by the security forces told me that the intelligence have postponed his/her interrogation. Yesterday, XXXXX helped transport three people to the hospital (which one I do not know), but as they arrived the police arrested several other people who had brought in more wounded, and thus they were able to get away without being arrested.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

Chinese netizen reactions to Iranian election

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

On June 12, the tenth ever Iranian presidential elections were held in Iran and two days later, the publicized outcome catalyzed an explosive reaction.

Sitting President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won the election over his main competitor, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Several analysts and journalists from the U.S. and U.K. expressed doubts about the authenticity of the results. So, it seems, did many of Mousavi's backers - who have been fighting what they called a "deeply flawed" election through protest demonstrations. Aka lots and lots of rioting.

So what does this have to do with China? As always, the curiosity of democracy evoked a strong reaction within the Chinese netizen community, especially when it seems to have failed. And after scouring the web for what was being said, it looks like a pretty huge proportion are in agreement that not only is Iran flawed, democracy is as well.

Is it a case of 50 cent armies jumping on the chance to influence public debate, or really the thoughts of the bulk of the Chinese net-surfing peoples? You decide:

Severall from iFeng.com criticized the Iranian government for letting something that seemed like a sham election - and its fallout - happen in the first place:

看到宋先生博客里面“民主”人士的嘴脸更让我坚定了这个信念：中国人是需要管的." "After reading Mr. Song's Blog about 'Democratic political people,' I am more sure than ever, Chinese people should be supervised and controlled."
"胡扯霸道现在他们就在抗议游行这次大选不公."
"Nonsense (that Iran is democratic). They (Iranian citizens) are protesting because of the unfairness of the election."

"现在选举演变成几十年所未有的对抗和骚乱，不知道自由派做何感想？ ——————用军队干呀！敢对抗，杀死他几十万人算个球！反正伊朗人多！军队的枪是干什么的？真是傻瓜。"
"The Iranian presidential election evolved after decades but now is triggering so many protests and riots; I am not sure how the liberal wings of the party would think? Use the army. Whoever fights against the government should be killed. There are so many people in Iran so killing several hundreds of thousands is not a big deal. What does the army do? Foolish (Iranian government)."

"请问，中国的自由派呢应该何去何从呢？ ---- 丧家之犬，无去无从."
"May I ask, where should Chinese liberal wing of the party go? -- An outcast with no whither." (This might be a proverb, meaning something along the lines of: a dog without a leash has no idea where to go)

"国家利益高于一切"
"National interest overrides everything else."

Others took the opportunity to rail against Western media and Americans (you know, the champions of this whole voting thing):

"美国是打着“民主旗号”反民主，因为他们搞的是假民主，玩的是“总统独.裁制”，也要求别人也搞假民主，从而扼杀真民主！" "America is always opposed to the other countries' democracy because American politics is a fake democracy; it is really the 'presidential dictatorship.' However, America asks other countries to be 'fake democracies' -- killing the real democracy!"

“支持内贾德。他是世界上仅有的三个敢于对美国说不的国家领导人之一。他是有骨气有勇气的领导人。”
“I support Ahmadinejad. He is one of the only three leaders of the countries who say no to America. He is a brave and dignified country leader."

"戈尔输给小步什的时候，小步什也是作弊的，但戈尔比较理性，能以国家安定为重，宣布失败。穆萨维他们有美国支持，但没有大多数伊朗人的支持，输了还不心甘。 "
"When Bush was elected as the American president, he cheated too. But Al Gore was rational and admitted that he lost because of national stabilization. Mousavi has America as his biggest backer but not many Iranian supporters. He should admitted that he lost."

According to China.com, Mousavi pledged to cancel the result of presidential election right after it was released and now the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered an investigation into voter fraud. The whole world will be watching the results closely, no doubt, but it'll be especially interesting to see how the events are interpreted by curious Chinese on the web.

Socially responsible geeks converge on Shanghai

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Yesterday, over a hundred technologists converged on Shanghai for TEDxShanghai at M1NT. Venture capitalists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs from the Geeks on a Plane tour, along with the cream of China's technocracy, were treated to inspirational presentations about how social media and technology can influence the future of the human race.

Some of the speakers included twitter residents such as Isaac Mao and Andrew Lih who addressed their unique perspectives of the development of social media and the future of communication.

A good mix of topics were addressed throughout the day, many of which not only explored inspiring technology driven projects in China but also mixed social media with social responsibility. A great example of using online communities for the good of society was the talk by An Zhu who is building a network of travelers via 1KG.org to bring school books to impoverished children in south-west China.

Also discussed during the forum were topics such as Shanghai's urban development, the essence of design and an eye opening (if not slightly confusing) presentation by Dave McClure on securitizing the income potential of the worlds population to finance education and welfare throughout the world.

The organizing team that put together the program together also broke the program up with acts from the percussion troupe Jammala and blind folk musician Zhou Yunpeng.

You can see some of the presentation videos here or visit either Christine Lu's or the official TEDxShanghai twitter stream to read about what transpired.

Presented By

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Report Gender inequality in the Chinese workplace

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Women in China have it rough. Between being sold for 300 yuan, being dug up as corpse brides, and that pesky gender imbalance, a report has now come out stating that gender discrimination is widespread in the Chinese workplace.

According to the Shanghai Daily, the Center for Women's Law and Legal Services of Peking University surveyed 3,000 women over the course of a year about their work environment. From the results, they determined that not only is one in four women being denied a job due to gender...

one in 25 of those surveyed were forced to sign labor contracts containing clauses forbidding them to get married or pregnant in a set period of time.
More than 20 percent said employers cut the salaries of women who become pregnant or gave birth, and 11.2 percent lost jobs for having a baby.

Some 28 percent said employers set different criteria in recruitment and women had to perform much better than their male peers in interviews to get the same job.

More than one-third believed male employees had more chances of promotion, and 52.1 percent attributed it to women having to spend more time taking care of their families. The research also found one in 20 women experienced workplace sexual harassment.

While it is not surprising that females are being treated unequally, this study is the first step in bringing the issue to light. Hopefully, it is also a step towards better working conditions in China. And while we won't hold our breath, perhaps in time things like job-related cosmetic surgeries will become relics from our misogynist past.

Photo by *LJ*

Green Dam software actually pirated?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

So not only is the Green Dam firewall software filled with whopping security flaws, it now looks like it's not even original code. The Jinhui Computer System Engineering Company, creator of Green Dam, is now being accused of using stolen intellectual property from the American firm Solid Oak Software.

The Green Dam software is meant to filter the web and mainly focuses on porn. According to Solid Oak, the Chinese company has taken substantial amounts of the its software, CYBERsitter, which also helps filter smut.

Solid Oak's PR manager, Jenna DiPasquale said the company received an anonymous tip off on Thursday. As she told vnunet.com:

"It is 100 per cent without a doubt our code that is included," said Jenna DiPasquale, Solid Oak's PR manager.
"It seems the majority of software is used, but it contains other code too. At this point what we're focusing on is stopping US companies from shipping PCs to China with the software installed."

It is also accused of using open source code without proper attribution.

Moreover, the government's insistence that Green Dam software be installed on every PC sold in China may pose a threat to U.S. computer makers as well, who could be liable for knowingly using something that is infringing on another company's IP. According to InformationWeek:

...the company's attorney was in the process of contacting U.S. computer makers to alert them to potential liability arising from the unauthorized use of CYBERsitter code.

Zhang Chenmin, general manager of Jinhui denies that the company has copied any codes from CYBERsitter, telling China Daily:

"I cannot deny that the two filters' databases of blacklisted URL addresses might share similarities. After all, they are all well known international pornographic websites that all porn-filters are meant to block," Zhang said. "But we didn't steal their programming code."

Photo by *Tall Guy*

Officialkilling waitress released without punishment

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Deng Yujiao, the waitress who killed an official after he allegedly sexually assaulted her and promptly became a Chinese folk hero, has now been released following a two hour trial. The dead official, head of a trade promo department in Deng's town, is said to have demanded "special services" from Deng, thrown money in her face and pushed her to the sofa several times before she stabbed him with a fruit knife. The internet soon took special interest in her case, rallying several times against perceived "injustices" during the investigation and pre-trial phases of her ordeal. The Hubei province court ruled that Deng was guilty of intentional injury and had acted with "excessive defence," but freed her without punishment. She was diagnosed with a "mental imbalance." Source: BBC

One less thing to worry about for US iPhone 3G owners in China

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

If you are waiting anxiously for the upcoming iPhone 3.0 firmware update - due to be released tomorrow - but concerned that it will relock your iPhone, you need not fear (too much). @MuscleNerd from the iPhone Dev Team announced on twitter that he would be airing a demo of an unlocked iPhone running on the new software.

Earlier it was reported that the iPhone was jailbreakable but not yet unlockable. This latest twitnouncement should mean that those of you who own iPhone's originating from the US or other countries with carrier restrictions will be able to continue using the device with either China Mobile or China Unicom, while still reaping the benefits of the improved features of the firmware update such as landscape on-screen keyboard and cut-and-paste functionality.

Image by MuscleNerd

Todays Links Hydropower dam plans damned artists scream mefirst and subtitlers make Prison Break watchable

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

China halts £18bn hydropower dam project over environmental concerns[guardian.co.uk] "China's environment ministry sought to reassert its authority on Friday by blocking a 200bn yuan (£18bn) cascade of hydropower dams near Shangri-la that would generate as much electricity as the Three Gorges Dam. Despite pressure from local governments that want to push ahead with big ticket development projects to offset the financial downturn, the ministry suspended approval of the project along the Jinsha iver in Yunnan province for failing to carry out adequate assessment of the environmental impact."
All Eyes Inward [Newsweek] "Until recently, the way Chinese artists got famous was to talk politics. The generation that grew up during the Cultural Revolution and the difficult years that followed was highly politicized and gained global recognition for its tongue-in-cheek images of Mao Zedong and Tiananmen Square, often rendered in eye-popping color... Though still hot, those new-wave artists are giving way to a very different group: the "me-first" generation, whose members talk about each other and themselves."
New tax plan sparks China protest [BBC] "Protesters in the south-eastern Chinese city of Nankang have overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes. Officials in Nankang said several hundred protesters blocked a major road while others delivered a petition to a local government office."
Found in translation: China's volunteer online army [CNN] "On Saturday at 10 a.m. it's show time for Brenda Zhang and her subtitle team. They roll out of bed, meet each other online and chat while their modems download the latest episode of "Prison Break," which just aired half a world away on Friday night in America. Once they have the show on their hard drives, the team spends the rest of the day creating subtitles for it in Chinese before putting it back online for other fans to watch."
'Made in China:' Regulatory Dilemma [Control Engineering] "The dubious safety of products imported from China has become in many respects the new human rights issue in the U.S.-China relationship — providing China critics a convenient and rhetorically rich target… But safety problems with Chinese products also point to the fact that U.S. regulators lack the ability to police the huge volume of goods that crosses U.S. borders in an era of globalized commerce. This is a particular problem with China, since the vast number of factories makes it extremely difficult for U.S. regulators or their contractors to conduct inspections. After all, the "Made in China" label often doesn't come with a company name or address that an American lawyer — much less a consumer — can trace."
Beijing to add new hospital against A(H1N1) flu [China Daily] "Beijing is adding a brand new hospital to its arsenal in the battle against the A(H1N1) influenza virus as the city notches its 50th positive case, Beijing health bureau said Monday. The facility will ease pressure on hospitals currently treating flu patients while also looking after people with routine injuries and illnesses."

Around Shanghai Turning Shanghainese Simply Life sales and Santana collisions

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

That pilot scheme for becoming a "real Shanghainese" home-stay guest in time for the World Expo is now kicking off in the Zhabei District. [Shanghai Daily]
But will this help reverse the trend of less tourists visiting the city thanks to the financial downturn? Who knows! [Shanghai Daily
If you're a fan of the Simply Life brand, Just a heads up in case you've been eyeing that ceramic dining set - they're hosting sales to celebrate their 10th Anniversary between July 4 and August 2. [Urbanatomy]
The forums are buzzing with the rumor that a Nigerian man may have been beaten to death on Tongren Lu. [Shanghai Expat]
A man on a bicycle flew into a VW Santana on Xizangbei Road yesterday morning. He was rushed to the hospital and is still currently in treatment. [Xinmin]

Photo by fateless gypsy

Yo! MTV Raps retrospective @ The Factory

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

If, as Chuck D said, "Rap music is CNN for black people," then Yo! MTV Raps was the unofficial News at Ten.

The first TV show dedicated to rap music, 'Yo! MTV Raps' ran from 1988 to 1999 on MTV's global networks and showed kids from Little Rock to Seoul what this hip hop thing was all about. Every major rap artist of the era appeared on the show to freestyle, hang out, or sometimes accidentally incriminate themselves.

As co-creator and presenter of the show until 1996, Fab 5 Freddy has a suitcase full of rare footage, annecdotes, and background stories from the classic era of hip-hop which he will share tonight at The Factory.

The event is basically free, though there is a full food menu and seating priority will be given to people with dinner reservations if the venue fills up (which we wouldn't bet against).

Event starts at 7pm, the show starts at 8 and, if you're hankering for more info, the full details are here.

The Factory
Building 4, 1933 Creative Complex
29 ShaJing Lu, near LiYang Lu
(nearest metro- HaiLun Lu on line 4)
Tel: 65633393

Revamping the Shanghai night market

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

For a bustling Chinese city, Shanghai has a pretty pitiful night market in the form of Wujianglu (especially when compared to Hong Kong and Taiwan). Now, the Shanghai government is thinking of overhauling the market right before the World Expo.

According to Xinmin, they are hoping to put in place regulations that would make the market serve as a main entertainment area for both local Shanghainese and foreigners as well as ensuring that "street food" night market stalls don't interfere with traffic around the city.

Any change seems like it will be good, since a Xinmin Wu Jiang Lu street survey revealed that most people weren't happy with the market as is: many complained about the bad environment, dim lights, lack of other entertainment facilities and short operating hours. They also argued that the night markets in Shanghai need a lot of developments and improvements.

So what are they hoping for?

According to the paper's netizen survey, 19 voted for "Shanghai needs a regulated night market, and we are looking forward it;" 19 others voted for "We are worrying about the quality of service, transportation, and all other supporting facilities."

Meanwhile, 11 voted for "It is pointless to set up a night market by only copying from Taiwan" and 13 voted for "Shopping malls and entertainment facilities should be built around the night market as well."

Green Dam plan withdrawn due to public pressure

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Looks like public opinion against the Green Dam Youth Escort software, including the non-stop foreign media coverage and the numerous internet petitions, has finally convinced the government that maybe it shouldn't make the install mandatory. And good thing too:

BusinessWeek reports that a closer look at the Green Dam software is much more than a program to block web porn. Researchers found that the program will automatically shut down programs based on keystroke combinations of banned words.

This kill switch doesn't just affect your web browser - test results have indicated that programs like Notepad have also involuntarily closed when certain terms (which we're not about to use in this post) are typed in. The article goes on to explain that it also keeps a log which is currently kept on your computer but could easily be made accessible to the authorities in subsequent updates.

These findings come from the OpenNet, a joint university initiative that includes notables such as Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard. Their findings not only raise questions of the particularly intrusive policy adopted by MIIT (Ministry of Industry & Information Technology) but also the effect this software will have on the stability of your operating system.

This research, along with the patent infringements, has resulted in not only a withdrawal of the plan to have Green Dam Youth Escort pre-installed in all computers destined for China has also a lawsuit. The Guardian reports:

Lawyer Li Fangping has filed a lawsuit against Green Dam. "The impact of this software will be huge. It will violate the rights of many citizens," he said. "But people were not told anything about it until a few weeks before its launch. This seriously violated the citizen's right to be informed."

Image by Dan H

Shanghai Rush So long and farewell to Norma David Rodrigo Fernanda

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

This week's Shanghai Rush elimination interviews is a two-for-one, since we only got around to watching the last two episodes on Youku (sorry, but it loads sooo slow outside of China!). Last last week, mother and son team Norma and David got kicked off after failing the map challenge. Then most recently, Brazilian couple Rodrigo and Fernanda came in last and had to go as well.

Coincidentally, both teams were known for having one particularly strong member - mother dearest in Norma and David's case, and macho-boyfriend in Rodrigo and Fernanda's - and only those members of each team answered our questions. Hmmm, we guess reality t.v. isn't too far from truth after all?

But we digress, on with the questions!

How did you guys decide to join Shanghai Rush?
Norma: My husband saw an ad for it and applied for me. Then I needed a partner and I applied for David (my son). I couldn't think of anyone else I'd like to be with for that length of time.

Rodrigo: I was looking for a job in enjoyclassifieds.com when I first saw the Shanghai Rush advertising, after 10 days I decided to check it out and then I thought it would be a great experience, so I spoke with Fernanda, she loved the idea and then we decided to give it a try.

So what happened your last challenge that you think made you end up coming in last?

Norma: Well, I was very sick with a fever and chills... I had bronchitis. At that point I didn't feel like working as hard to continue. David did want to but he knew how ill I was. Also, we started off last, starting off last or next to last is always risky, your chances of moving ahead are slim.

Rodrigo: I think we lost strength after Fernanda’s accident, plus we got the worst taxi driver in Shanghai, who took 1 hour to go to that water city heheh.

If you could do things differently, what would you do?

Norma: I think we would mentally prepare ourselves and push ourselves more. Also, we would go and do a little research on the city.

Rodrigo: I would be more relaxed about everything, I think I was to serious about the competition.

What was the hardest challenge you encountered during the event?

Norma: Probably the last one we were eliminated from, the map.

Rodrigo: Don’t kill few taxi drivers hahaha.

What challenge was your favorite?

Norma: All the challenges were actually fun, and very exciting. But, my favorite was the making of dumplings (second episode).

Rodrigo: Bow and Arrow (first episode), in my opinion was the only one who could really change positions.

So what's in the cards for you now that Shanghai Rush is over? What are you up to?

Norma: I am getting ready to visit my other children in the USA, and my 6 sisters. David is getting ready to go back to university.

Rodrigo: I would like to work for ICS as a host or maybe reporter, dreams a part I really want to find a good job. I'm starting a Brazilian BBQ company for parties and events, it is called Shanghai Top Grill, it is something that can't be missed!

Any teams you're particularly rooting for?

Norma: Justin and Mattie, Richard and Alice, Rodrigo and Fernanda. [Ed note: Yeah, we don't know why she picked a team that was eliminated before her either. Maybe she didn't notice?]

Rodrigo: Rooting for? Goooo guys! Hehehe

To be honest we like all the team, we made friends with everybody, so doesn’t matter who win it, we will be happy for them!

Interview RandomKe brings postlaowai to Shanghai

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

RandomK(e), a punky Beijing band that has been called everything from "angry hippies" to "post-lao wai" brings their China tour to Shanghai, with support by Duck Flight Goose.
Where:LOgO, 13 Xingfu Lu, near Fahuazhen Lu. 幸福路13号, 近法华镇路
Starts: Friday, June 19, 10:00 PM
Cover: 30 RMB
For more local events, visit the Shanghaiist Calendar.

Formed in 2004, RandomK(e) is quite possibly the burliest group of dudes ever to assemble on a Beijing stage ever. Impossible to pigeonhole into a single genre, the band has been described as everything from "stoner rock" to "post-laowai" to "dubby krautrockers with unconscious Shellac leanings".

Decide for yourself when they play their first show in Shanghai at LOgO this Friday. As an added bonus to our Shanghaiist readers, we're giving away four of their CDs - just send an email to contest.giveaway (at) shanghaiist (dot) com with the words "Shanghaiist Random K(e) CD Giveaway" in the subject line and your name in the body. The first four to send an email to us with that info will get a CD.

How did you guys all meet?

We were friends before we starting playing, for the most part, that had met through our mutual interest and participation in the local music scene. Jackson and Richard played together in a band called Handsome Black, I had played in a few bands by then. Jackson and I got to talking one day back in 2003 about the bands we liked and the band that we’d like to put together; one day at after a soundcheck at a gig I was playing, Adam jumped onstage with another friend and jammed a bit, and I realized that I’d known him for years and not known he was a badass bassist. Jackson and I had a rehearsal with some others by then, and Richard and Adam quickly joined in; after a few experiments as a five- and six-piece, we slimmed the RandomK(e) lineup down.

How would you describe your music?

No good rock band is ever going to tell you that they sound like something or someone. Basically, we play rock music. Good rock music. There are elements of all of the different kinds of music that have influenced each member, from 70s funk to 00’s experimental to everywhere in between, pre- and post-.

A word that comes up a lot is post-rock, but so is prog, post-punk, and pop, and even sometimes dub and jazz. We’re open to everything not simply for the sake of throwing a whole lot of stuff together, but because we like so much stuff. We also mix it up every so often playing as a trio and even did a duo (bass/guitar) gig. And Jackson can play hours solo with his table of gear.

But ok, the take-away quote: Radiohead meets Mogwai at a party thrown by Joy Division, and then everyone heads out at an after-hours jazz joint, passes around a bong and records the jam session.

You've been described as 'post-laowai' -what do you think of that label?
I like the idea of ‘post-laowai’, but it won’t do us any good until others grab on to it and agree that we don’t need the label: Yes, we happen to be from a country that is not China, but that doesn’t matter. If it wasn’t for Beijing, these particular people never would have met and formed a band. If we’re not a Beijing band, who is?

The reality is - and I know this because I find myself doing it all the time - people, whether Chinese or foreign, who go to rock shows and see that there are foreigners on stage will likely think: ‘These guys couldn’t do this back home because they weren’t good enough, but here, they think they are’ (unless they think: ‘hey, they’re foreign, they must be good’).

While there are certainly crappy bands of foreigners, there are a ton of not crappy bands with foreigners. And hey: Aren’t there tons of crappy bands with Chinese, too? We’ve found that it’s hard to be taken seriously as a band as non-Chinese, but that’s changing with more people who come to see our shows, because live, it’s so obvious that it doesn’t matter where we’re from. It’s useful as biographical material, but not as a descriptor.

We should be beyond geography at this point. But alas, we’re not. So despite RandomK(e)’s almost 40 years of collective Beijing living, not only are we not a Beijing band, but we’re not even just a band of waidiren. We’re laowai (insert mouth-frothing rant about hating the word ‘laowai’ here). And meanwhile, the bands that move to Beijing from other Chinese cities, they aren’t even called waidi bands; they’re just bands. It’s an obstacle that’s frustrating: Just because we’re foreigners doesn’t mean that a) we don’t take our music seriously, and b) our music is not original, and really fugging mind-blowingly amazing. Not to toot our own horn or anything -no, wait: I want to lay on the horn- we’re pretty damn good, and it’s not because we’re foreigners, or waidiren, or because we live in Beijing; it’s because we’re just good.

Is this the first show you've played in Shanghai?

Yes, and we’re really psyched to finally be coming down, especially after having the whole thing almost unravel when 21g decided to break up instead of play with us. It’s silly that it’s taken us four years to do it, but I’m pretty sure that after Friday night, there will be plans in the works for a return. It’s so important for us to play to different audiences in different cities. But I’m glad that we have a record (“Waiting” [Tag Team Records], which was released in March across China and is available online via http://wa3.cn) under our belts to bring with us to Shanghai.

How is the Beijing music scene different from other scenes?

It’s hard to deny that Beijing’s music scene is China’s music scene (sorry Shanghaiists). As a foreigner who is/has been involved on several levels of the music scene and who used to write about it before the big blogging days, I’m impressed with the amount of commentary by English-language bloggers I have found about the Shanghai music scene, and I don’t feel like Beijing has the same level of attention paid to its music in that same way. But there is certainly more happening in Beijing. What’s great about Beijing’s scene is that it’s big enough that there’s at least a little of everything. There are a bunch of great places to play.

I think it comes down to the fact that musicians have been moving to Beijing from elsewhere to make music, and that breeds a whole range of bands. But Beijing is a bit too complacent about our status as Centre of the Middle Kingdom (in so many ways, but we’ll stick to rock for now), and risks ignoring or snubbing other cities’ scenes to our own detriment. So, RandomK(e) hereby pledges to take in as much of the Shanghai scene as is possible in a 20-hour time frame. Shanghai: Bring out your scene!

So what can we expect from the show this weekend?
A kick-ass rock show four years in the making. That we promis(e).

The end to rampant urbanization in China?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

One of the most worrisome aspects of the last couple years in China has been its overly rapid development of urban areas - the nonstop construction of skyscrapers, high-rises, highways - and the sometimes careless disregard for its environmental and social impact. At least now it seems like someone in the government is recognizing the problem, to the point of calling the current economic downturn a great opportunity to refocus on other priorities.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a central government think tank, released the Blue Book of Cities in China on Monday, which detailed the happenings of China's 118 megalopolises (defined by cities housing over 1 million people).

According to Xinhua:

Compared with the 2000 figures derived from China's fifth census, urban citizens covered by basic medical insurance had increased 93.87 million, basic pension insurance participants increased 17.53 million, unemployment insurance participants increased 7.55 million, employment injury insurance participants increased 16.37 million and maternity insurants increased 14.06 million.
Urbanization had not narrowed income gaps. According to the blue book, the urban: rural income ratio averaged about 5 in 2008 by contrast with the gap in 2000 when the ratio was 2.79, said Wei Houkai, co-editor-in-chief of the blue book.

With rapid urbanization, China was also encountering surging challenges amid the global downturn, which has had a serious impact on the economy, the book warned.

The South China Morning Post felt that under the rather gloomy statistics (GDP growth rate dropping, sharp declines in exports and industrial output, decrease in real estate development) was something more hopeful:

Shan Jingjing , a key author, said this showed that urbanization was about to enter a period of profound adjustment.
"The transformation is about replacing a quantity-first mentality with quality first," Dr Shan said. "The transformation is about the end of the real estate development frenzy, which has been tearing down old cities and building up new ones since the late 1980s.

"The transformation is about improving a city's functions rather than increasing its size."

The report recommended that the government achieve sustainable development, increase investment in existing infrastructure and reducing the cost of urban living and living standards. It also asked for reform in the residential registration system, in order to grant privileges to more rural residents.

The recommendations sound very much like what the stimulus plan promised back in March, which makes us wonder if they will ever actually be more than just talk. But we'll count it a hopeful sign that people from somewhere inside the ranks are considering an alternative to the productive but destructive path China's gone down so far. We sometimes get the feeling that China long stopped building cities for people and our Jane Jacobs-philic hearts would love nothing more than for grandiosity to take a backseat to usefulness one day in the future.

What made Shanghai Pride so very proud?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Shanghaiist intern Kirsti Jönson, who covered Shanghai Pride (a China first!) last week, gives us her account of the event and what it might mean for all the LGBTa living in China.

It's never too late for a Shanghai Pride warp up, we say. Let's face it: Shanghai Pride, mainland China´s first official week-long celebration of homos, bisexuals, transgendered, queers and all of those wonderful people ”in between”, was a tremendous rainbow-colored success.

One might ask what the difference was between this and a normal week amongst Shanghai's queer community, which has long been coming together and socializing at the various gay venues around town. Unlike most Pride festivals around the world, Shanghai's was only held in private places and most of the events were entertainment-oriented, in opposition to the more theoretical and political focus found in other places.

People watched movies, tasted wine, listened to the history of gay Shanghai, watched drag shows; they laughed, discussed, partied and sometimes got lucky. Sure, there was a lot of proud waving with rainbow flags, but only behind closed doors. Can´t a Shanghai queer choose to do all of that any day of the week, any week of the year?

Well, they could, but there was a difference this time. A huge difference.

This time they did it while the eyes of the world were watching. Private venues, closed doors - it didn't matter since both national and international media were there to see and spread the word about queer life in China. BBC, The New York Times, China Daily, NPR and Le Monde wrote up tributes, and gay and lesbian bloggers in China and around the world followed the festival with intense interest.

Also, just organizing events in the name of Pride has a symbolic value in itself. Every LGBT knows the difference between celebrating Gay Pride and going out under the tacit understanding that, even if you're not being punished, you're not being recognized.

This time had the added benefit of seeing lesbians and gays, bisexuals and transgendered, partying together, not separately. During most time of the year, queer life in Shanghai is divided between the sexes, but on this very proud week, the different fractions of queer community merged together in one big happy soap bubble.

There was one little piece missing though, and as such, a quite important one: the Chinese lalas, that is, the local lesbian or bisexual girls - almost none showed up during the week. This is a sad mystery that needs further investigation.

The official interference in the middle of the week, shutting down some of the events, was unfortunate, but that dip might have caused the party spirit to rise even higher on Saturday, at the all day rounding up party at Cotton´s. Don´t they say that facing resistance just feeds the fire even more?

Also on Shanghaiist:
Authorities intervene with Shanghai Pride
Shanghai Pride Panel: Gay venues and spaces in Shanghai
Eye on Gay Shanghai: Day 1 of Mainland China's 1st Gay Pride

Read some of the articles about Shanghai Pride written around the world:

CHINA DAILY
Shanghai hosts first gay pride festival
Gay festival teaches tolerance
Pride of tolerance

NEW YORK TIMES
Gay Festival in China Pushes Official Boundaries

NEWSWEEK
China Gay-Pride event meets obstacles

BBC
Shanghai to show pride with gay festival
China bans parts of gay festival

Todays Links Seven people youll meet in hotel quarantine

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

The Seven People You’ll Meet in Hotel Quarantine [A Product Guy] "Having now spent almost 3 days here in Hotel Quarantine, and adjusted to life in the Big House, I’ve noticed some common patterns among the types of people I’m encountering and sharing these experiences with. Generally, they fall into one of seven categories."
Police fatally wound man during protest in China's Xinjiang [AFP] "Police in China's western-most Muslim region of Xinjiang fired warning shots to disperse a crowd protesting against a real estate project Tuesday, fatally wounding a man, state media said. The incident occurred in the regional capital Urumqi when a policeman identified as Kudelet Kurban accidentally fired his gun into a crowd of about 60 people, Xinhua news agency reported."
U.S. may be within N. Korea missile range in 3 years, official warns [LA Times] "North Korea may be able to overcome technical difficulties and assemble a missile capable of hitting West Coast cities within three years, a top Defense Department official said Tuesday, but it is unlikely to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead in that time frame. The U.S. assessment came as North Korea's rulers show signs of preparing for additional weapons tests in the face of international condemnation and new United Nations sanctions."
Google's censorship struggles continue in China [Cnet News] "Google was going to help democratize data in China. Instead, about three years after entering the Middle Kingdom, the search company still finds itself in an uncomfortable working relationship with government censors. For about eight days between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked all results that might come from searches for Beijing's Tiananmen Square."
Beijing orders 'Buy China' for stimulus projects [Associated Press] "China has imposed a requirement for its stimulus projects to use domestically made goods — a move that could strain ties with trading partners after Beijing criticized Washington's "Buy American" stimulus provisions. Projects must obtain official permission to use imported goods, said an order issued by China's main planning agency and eight other government bodies."
NKorea denies Beijing visit by Kim's son: report [AFP] "North Korea has denied a report that its leader Kim Jong-Il's third son visited Beijing earlier this month, Chinese state media quoted a Pyongyang diplomat as saying. The Global Times carried the denial one day after Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper said that Kim Jong-Un arrived for the secret visit by air around June 10 and met Chinese President Hu Jintao and other senior Chinese leaders."

Photo by Edna Zhou

Presented By

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Music Video of the Day Jewelz Charlie Spacer Woman 2009

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Jewelz' brand new treatment for the Italo classic "Spacer Woman" by Charlie from 1983. Shot by Jakob Montrasio with a Sony Cinealta PMW EX1 on a cold day in Shanghai in Tianzifang (Taikang Lu), along the Bund, Nanjing Lu, Xujiahui and Lujiazui.

Photo of the Day Rush hour

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Photo by cindychu

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).

Shanghai Movie Night Transformers II

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Chinasmack and CNReviews (and us!) are organizing a movie night to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (dun dun dun) especially for all blog readers around Shanghai. While normal ticket prices are around 80 to 100RMB, Fauna of Chinasmack has managed to negotiate it down to 65 RMB including free small popcorn and drink.

The movie night will be on Wednesday, 24 June 2009, starting at 7pm. The location will be:

Broadband International Complex
6/F, Shanghai Times Square, 99 Huaihai Zhong Lu
near Pu’an Lu, Metro Line 1 Huangpi Nan Lu Station
淮海中路99号大上海时代广场6楼
近普安路, 地铁1号线黄陂南路站

All you have to do to get this special price is to reserve on Chinasmack's site by 20 June. Reserve anytime after that and the price jumps back up to 80RMB faster than Megan Fox's career after the first mega-robot movie.

So reserve now... or soon!... at the Chinasmack site and come watch what promises to be one of the craziest action movies this side of Summer, while meeting a bunch of like-minded people around Shanghai.

Interview Nosaj Thing

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Nosaj Thing, a.k.a. Jason Cheung, is a L.A.-based music producer whose geeky charm at first sight deceptively conceals his sinister and innovative musical agendas. At the age of 13, he molded his father's rudimentary PC that struggled with even Word documents into a Frankestein Intel Celeron home studio.

Now aged 23, he has just released "Drift", his first full length album this month - which catapulted straight into number 1 on Bleep's electronic music chart - and is set to take Shanghai on a haunting instrumental journey this weekend. We are looking forward of course since we've heard Nosaj Thing does a wicked live show. For a quick sampling, check out Nosaj Thing on Myspace and Vimeo.

FREE the WAX caught up with Nosaj Thing before he flew out on his first Asian tour and talked about his influences and the story behind his debut album.

NOSAJ THING will be playing his debut album on Friday and host a workshop at The Factory on Saturday.
Where: (for Friday) Yuyintang, 1731 Yanan Xi Lu, near Kaixuan Lu 延安西路1731号(凯旋路) 中山公园小白楼 and (for Saturday) The Factory @ 1933, Building 4, 29 Shajing Lu, near Haining Lu (tell the taxi its at Jiulong Hotel) 意工场, 沙径路29号, 近周家嘴路溧阳路
Starts: Friday, June 19, 9PM for the album release; Saturday, June 20, 3PM for the workshop at the Factory
Cover: 50 RMB for Friday, free for the workshop
For more local events, visit the Shanghaiist Calendar.

I read here somewhere that you started making music at age 13. What made it start taking a similar shape to what you are producing right now?

When I started making music, I was experimenting with different styles and rhythms. I was into hip hop and underground dance music like drum and bass and house. I wanted to blend all my influences together and it started to shape up over time.

You said on your blog that you were laid-off from your day job! Is that the beginning of Nosaj Thing, the full time producer?

Yes, for now... and I hope for a while! I'm going to see where my music takes me. I've been learning a lot more about myself ever since I got laid off! Now I've been able to focus all my time and energy into my music. I feel blessed that I can sustain it right now. I am sacrificing a steady paycheck but this is a risk I'm willing to take.

How much do you think nostalgia, longing and other such bittersweet emotions play a part in your music?

Nostalgia comes into place for a lot of it. Writing songs is very therapeutic for me. They are emotional feelings I want to recreate. Sometimes, writing music can ease my stress or let out my inner beast. Other times I see a certain kind of spirituality to the way I approach music-making.

What do you think is the most important element in your sound?

I would say I do emotional/cinematic music with heavy influences from electronica, hip hop and experimental music, so definitely musicality comes first.

Other than your music, what else moves and interests you?

I'm a big fan of art and technology. I follow a lot of tech blogs and geek out about the latest gadgets. Seeing art inspires my music. Other than that, my family and friends inspire me. Sometimes I feel that my music is a reflection of my moods and most of my moods are affected by them.

You got a good 300,000 hits on myspace and a lot of love from a healthy number of fans! What role has the internet played in your career so far?

It has played a huge roll. The immediacy of social network sites have been great help. I try to use all social outlets to get my music out and interact with listeners.

And you released your first album this June! What is the story behind it? Can people expect the same Nosaj as your last EP?

The new album "Drift" is pretty different in comparison to the "Views/Octopus" EP. This new record has a lot more thought put into it. Making music is therapeutic for me. I would consider "Drift" a cinematic record.

What do you expect from your first Asian tour?

I've been to Korea once when I was really young. I'm really excited about this Asia tour and interested how everyone will respond to my music. I hope to see and experience as much as I can.

And what is in the plans for the rest of 2009?

I'm doing a few remixes and hope to tour extensively. I'm also working on a interactive visual show and new music. In the future I'd love to make music for films/television and work with hip hop and pop artists.

Video Street Fighter II Bonus Stage LIVE

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

We have fond memories of destroying cars in the bonus stage of SFII at our local arcade, and part of us always wanted to try wailing out on one in real life. Well consider that wish shattered. We guess there's a reason why movies based on versus fighting games always sucked.

Chinasmack has compiled a pretty hilarious bag of reactions from Mop.

Jet Li is a Singaporean now?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

First the Singaporeans seduced China's prettiest lady, Gong Li, and now it looks like the city-state might have its claws on China's current kung fu king! According to the AFP, Jet Li has taken up Singaporean citizenship and brought a property worth nearly 20 million Singapore dollars. Of course, nobody's confirming it right now... are our hearts really going to be broken again? WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT SINGAPORE ANYWAY?

Deputy director general is found to rape underaged girl by an online post

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

According to Netease.com, netizens are now undertaking a "human flesh search" for a deputy director general in Wenzhou, after an anonymous net post on a Wenzhou BBS claimed that the official raped a 14-year-old girl earlier this week.

Police reports have also indicated that a minor reported a rape case involving two officials after June 12th to security authorities.

The shocking accusation, posted on June 16th, said "Proof: Wang deputy director general from XX Bureau of XX Town raped a 14-year-old girl who already reported to the police." It also claimed that the official paid the girl 6,000RMB after.

It asked for netizens' reactions and legal solutions to manage this incident. At this point, more than 6,000 people have clicked this thread with 86 follow ups of netizens' posts.

Here are some netizens' reactions from Netease.com. As with many "officials are scumbag" themed posts, many took the opportunity to rail on the accused:

"各位，小心自己家的小闺女吧，这些人渣可是什么事都干的出来。它们是人渣。" "Everyone, look after your own daughters, these scumbags can do anything to anyone. They are scumbags."
"恩，然后直接说处女膜是那小孩自己掉的，那小女孩有罪````对不？亲爱的副局长.然后说要检验处女膜，发现没有处女膜了，她就是卖淫了"
"Yes, and then say, 'the girl lost her hymen herself; therefore the girl is guilty (to incriminate me falsely).' Or say that the girl is a prostitute. Is that right, dear deputy director?"

"现在的领导啊！不枪毙怎么办？？？还有什么其他办法吗"
"The leaders right now have to be executed by shooting! There are no other ways!"

However, some people think that the underaged girl wanted the money to let the deputy director rape her:

"2个未成年少女同老男人一起宵夜，打算要干什么？还好，我已经拒绝很多起卖处的电话了。" "Two underaged girls went to a hotel late at night with some old men. It is so obvious! I have declined many phones calls to sell their virginities."
"很清楚，这家伙是上套了，而他确实就不干不净；那女的就是夜莺！"
"Obviously, this guy (deputy director) was tricked (to have sex with the little girl). He is guilty but the girl is a prostitute for sure."

It seems that the internet is ever more quickly becoming the rallying place to air grievances against previously untouchable figures. Most recently, waitress Deng Yujiao was acquitted of her murder (allegedly in self defense) of an official who had tried to sexually assault her - a verdict that many say would have never come about if it weren't for the outpouring of internet support.

In cases like this, where the facts are more murky (demonstrated by the somewhat divided opinions of the Netease populace), it's harder to say whether we'll see a happy ending... or if there is one, for whom it will be for.

Movies about Shanghai Building 173

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="360">One of the movies we're most excited about seeing is Building 173, a docudrama about one Shanghainese building and the people who lived in it. It'll be airing twice on Saturday, June 20 - once at 6.30pm and a second one at 9pm (with a discussion afterward).

Studio Stare explains their movie:

Building 173 tells the stories and secrets of one building, seven people and three generations, past and present. The building witnessed three quarters of a century of human history. It was originally a luxury apartment building called the Cosmopolitan in downtown Shanghai. Built in the early twentieth century by the Tan family, the Cosmopolitan was inhabited by an international community; with the wars and political upheavals taking place in Shanghai, the residents changed to middle class and intellectual Chinese families, and later to working class families when the apartments were divided into smaller compartments after the Communist took over.

Cover charge is 30RMB, which includes a drink, and you're recommended to book your tickets by calling 138 1694 4747. The event is located at the Stage Back Gallery, Room 310 (3F) 696 Weihai Lu (by Shaanxi Nan Lu). In case of rain, the event will be rescheduled.

Shanghai releases formal qualifications for earning a hukou

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

You know that whole initiative to get more "qualified experts" to actually receive a coveted Shanghai hukou? Well, now the city government has finally released details of its three-year trial plan, according to Shanghai Daily:

The first batch of applicants who meet the requirements only amount to about 3,000 as they must have held a Shanghai Residence Card for at least seven years, said Ye Minzhong, deputy director of the Shanghai Development and Reform Commission. The Shanghai Residence Card is a temporary permit that was launched in 2002.
Officials said there will be no quota on the number of permanent residence permits granted during the three-year test run although that could change once the trial ends.

"We will grant it (the permanent residence) to whoever meets the requirements in the trial period," said an official in the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau who asked not to be named.

The other qualifications are pretty much the same as the ones we reported earlier. Besides being a part of the social security system for seven years, applicants must also have paid taxes, obtained a vocational qualification of medium or high, be clear of violations of family planning policies, and have clean credit and no criminal record.

Since the release of the formal qualifications late Wednesday, there have already been voices of dissent. Migrant workers have argued that they are being discriminated against by the new regulations, China Daily said.

A netizen from Guangdong province said the drafters of rules were narrow-minded.
"It discriminates against poor people from other provinces," the netizen wrote. "What about the six million migrant workers in Shanghai, who have contributed to the city's fast development?"

A good chunk of Shanghainese people were similarly displeased, if for different reasons:

In an online poll garnering opinions from among more than 1.6 million netizens on web portal eastday.com, more than 88 percent disagreed with the rules, saying Shanghai could not afford a bigger population...
A Shanghai netizen complained that "eight out of 10 Shanghai residents around me are out of a job and others earn 1,000 yuan ($146) a month".

"Why are only people from other provinces considered talents?"

Volcano delaying Asia flights

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

A volcano located in Russia is currently wreaking havoc on all trans-Pacific flights to and from East Asia. According to The Canadian Press, the Sarychev Peak first started shooting ash and smoke on June 12 and now airlines are trying to avoid flying through the 50-km diameter residue. Anyone planning to fly to the western coast of North America should double-check their flight status before leaving to the airport. Shanghaiist especially feels for anyone who has just been released from a week in quarantine, just to have their flight delayed and be placed right back in a hotel.

Quote of the Day Qin Gang �刚 Foreign Ministry spokesman

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

我想提醒你的是，这里是外交部的新闻发布厅，
不是讨论同性恋问题的场所。
What I'd like to remind you is this.This is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference and not a forum for the discussion of gay issues.

— Qin Gang (秦刚), Foreign Ministry spokesman

In response to a question by a journalist on why the word "homosexuality" was among the list of filtered words in the
Green Dam censorship software even though China has no laws against homosexuality. [Source]

Todays Links More on the green dam Buying China and sex change guidelines

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Computer-makers fight China's filter order [SFGate] "Responding to another citizens' revolt, 4,000 miles from Tehran, China reportedly won't force individual computer users to install software to filter out "harmful" stuff. But it has not backed down on its order that, as of July 1, all PCs sold in China must have such software installed. That, as we've noted, puts No. 1 U.S. seller of PCs in China, Palo Alto's Hewlett-Packard Co., in a serious bind. Especially, as is now known, because the software can be used to block considerably more than "pornography.""
Beijing Says 'Buy China' Directive Is Not Protectionist [VoA] "China is defending its so-called "Buy China" directive that gives Chinese companies first, and nearly exclusive, priority in winning contracts under the country's nearly $600 billion stimulus program. When the U.S. government debated adding a "Buy American" requirement to its stimulus bill, China protested loudly. Chinese officials called the move toxic and protectionist."
Report on effects of Climate Change [Boston Examiner] "As Congress acts to enact a Climate Change bill, China is still seen as being unwilling to make carbon reductions. It would quite possible to have a carbon cap and trade program in place and then have the Senate not ratify the upcoming Copenhagen Protocol if China and India fail to enact law to reduce carbon emissions. The U.S. should lead by example and pave the way for developing countries to participate. Failure by the Senate to ratify the Copenhagen Protocol will send the wrong message to China, Brazil and India."
Flaws in China's digital dissidents [Asia Times Online] "Despite having a reputation in the West as trailblazing citizen journalists, many of China's young bloggers are seen by Chinese as egocentric, showy and self-serving. Most come from the "me generation", a derisive term for youths born after the nation began its strictly enforced one-child policy in 1979."
China attacks Google over "pornographic" links [Reuters] "China's Internet watchdog condemned the Chinese-language version of Google on Thursday for "disseminating pornographic and vulgar information." The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center said it had complained twice to Google about the "pornographic and vulgar links" available through its search engine."
China preps 1st guidelines for sex change surgery [AP] " China's first medical guidelines on sex change surgery could require patients to gain police approval before the procedure, according to a posting on the Health Ministry's Web site. The proposed guidelines, posted Tuesday, say candidates for surgery must show an agreement from police to change their sex on their identification cards once the procedure is complete."

The Laramie Project a hate crime depicted on stage

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

One of the banned events during last week´s Pride festival, was the theatrical production "The Laramie Project". But don't worry about missing it, you´ll get a new chance to watch it this weekend! The organizers have found a new venue, and the play can finally be showed at River South Art Center, on Friday and Saturday.

The play tells the story of a small town's reaction to one of America's most talked about hate crimes. Laramie was the site of the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21 year-old gay university student, who was found tied to a “buck” fence, beaten and unconscious in October 1998,. The accused: his two best friends Aaron and Russel.

Because of this, Matthew Shepard is now an icon in gay society.

This true story later became a play, created by Moisés Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theatre Project. Cityweekend had a great rundown about the process:

On November 14,1998, members of Tectonic Theatre Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming, and conducted interviews with the people of the town. The Play is edited from those interviews, as well as from journal entries by members of the company. The Play is about the town of Laramie, its citizens, and their reaction to Matthew Shepard’s murder.

When the play is now visiting Shanghai, it´s under the creative wings of director Zsuzsi Lindsay and Zuloo Theatre Productions, based in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Zsuzsi Lindsay has previously, in 2004, directed the play Corpus Christi, who caused quite a stir when a group of Christian protesters in Scotland called on police to prosecute the theater company for blasphemy, because it was putting on a play about a gay Jesus. In Shanghai, she has brought us both a pantomime version of Cinderella and an English-language rendition of the Vagina Monologues.

Date: June 19 & 20
Time: cocktail opens at 7pm, show starts at 8pm
Address: River South Art Center, 3rd floor, 1247 Suzhou Nan Lu, near Xingchang lu
Directions: Metro line #1, XinZha station, exit 1, turn left, you should see a bridge in front of you, don't go on the bridge, take the walkway on the left hand side next to the bridge. It is a building on your left. Here's a link to a map if it helps make things clearer.
Price: 100RMB

Around Shanghai Danny Boyle and the SIFF City Deli and more on the US Pavilion

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Danny Boyle, talking at the Shanghai International Film Festival, has taken a stance against censorship in thsi country. [Guardian.co.uk]
Want to hear more about what Danny Boyle has to say? Check out That's Shanghai's interview with him. He reveals that Ewan McGregor will be here today, which is all we wanted to know anyway. [Urbanatomy]
Speaking of, Peter Chan has unveiled his huge 44 million RMB set - a recreation of 1905 downtown Hong Kong - in Shanghai for his upcoming film, Bodyguards and Assasins, as part of the SIFF. [Straits Times]
Sandwich aficionados: City Deli has moved from its little hole in the wall to the sixth-floor spot in the Golden Eagle Plaza off Nanjing Lu and Shaanxi Bei Lu. [Smart Shanghai]
The Peninsula group has opened up its ninth hotel in the world... in Shanghai. All those in favor of fancy schmancy afternoon teas, rejoice! [LA Times]
Shanghai Scrap reveals some of the secrets of the US Expo Pavilion. Or rather, shows us why the secrets can't be revealed at all. [Shanghai Scrap]

Photo by Chad Ingraham for Urbanatomy

HIV/AIDS rates rise amongst men who have sex with men

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

The fastest rising demographic of people contracting HIV/AIDS in Shanghai are "city men who have sex with men," according to Shanghai Daily. At a medical forum yesterday, experts said that the amount of HIV/AIDS cases involving these fraternizations has risen fivefold. While incidences of syphilis have remained relatively stable, the HIV/AIDS incidence rate has increased from 1.5% in 2005 to 7.5% in 2007. The forum emphasized that as society is becoming more tolerant o the LGBTa community, intervention and education initiatives should be intensified.

Presented By

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Shanghai official downplays rivalry with Hong Kong

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Ever since the State Council revealed plans to transform Shanghai into a global financial and shipping center by 2020, rumors have been swirling of a competition for supremacy between it and Greater China's current economic center, Hong Kong. Not that the official stance should surprise anyone, but Shanghai's most senior Communist Party member has now come out to say any "rivalry" is completely imagined. Yu Zhengsheng told Hong Kong media that the two cities would "always be complementary to each other and the growth of the two cities brings them mutual benefits." This marks the first time the government has said anything... which almost makes you wonder. If they felt the need to assure people of its nonexistance, maybe there's some truth to the rivalry after all? Source: SCMP

Live Music This Weekend Joyside The Mushrooms and RandomKe

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

This weekend is all about hero worship. Miserable Faith are the kind of metal band that causes diehard fans to get their name and logo tatooed across their bodies; Joyside's Bian Yuan sexy swagger is enough to make you weak at the knees; while Shanghai's own folk heroes Dan Shapiro of The Rogue Transmission and Pu Pu of The Mushrooms will also be in action building their own cult followings. Last weekend may have been a quiet one, but the next few days are anything but.

Friday
It's not often you make your way out to Live Bar to be slapped with a 100 kuai door charge. But that's what you'll find if you head there tonight. The hefty ticket price gives you some idea as to the devotion that Miserable Faith inspire and we wouldn't be surprised if plenty of people stump up a pink note to see the metal legends.
¥100, 8pm, 721 Kunming Lu, near Tongbei Lu, 昆明路721号近通北路

If you've been paying attention this week, you'll have noticed that Beijing-based RandomK(e) gave us a "take-away quote" to describe their music. What kind of a shameless writer would use such a quote you ask? We would. So we can tell you that RandomK(e) sound like "Radiohead meets Mogwai at a party thrown by Joy Division, and then everyone heads out at an after-hours jazz joint, passes around a bong and records the jam session." Intrigued? Head to LOgO tonight to hear exactly what that sounds like or win one of their CDs in our CD giveaway contest. Just send an email to contest.giveaway (at) shanghaiist (dot) com with the words "Shanghaiist Random K(e) CD Giveaway" in the subject line and your name in the body and be one of four people to get a free CD.

Duck Fight Goose, the side project of Lava|Ox|Sea's lead singer will be providing support.

¥30, 10pm, 13 Xingfu Lu, near Fahuazhen Lu. 幸福路13号, 近法华镇路

Soma might be fluttering their eyelids and casting flirtatious glances in the direction of MAO, but for the moment they're still putting on gigs at the Dream Factory and tonight sees them host German singer-songwriter Kira. In support will be The Honeys and Zhong Chi (we assume backed by Triple Smash) whose debut album has recently been posted in its entirety on her Douban page.
¥80, 8pm. 4/F, Building B, No. 28 Yuyao Lu, near Xikang Lu. 余姚路28号B4楼, 近西康路

Saturday
Beijingers Joyside haven't played in Shanghai since... erm, we forget, but it's been a long time. They've taken their The Clash-influenced sound all over the world since the last time they were here and they have quite a cult following. Given the scarcity of their visits and the idol-worship associated with them you could expect Yuyintang to be busy on Saturday if it wasn't for the other band on the bill. With The Rogue Transmission opening up, YYT won't be busy, it'll be absolutely rammed.
¥40, 9pm, 1731 Yan'an Xi Lu (entrance on Kaixuan Lu), 延安西路1731号 (入口在凯旋路)

The Summer People's Rock night up at Live Bar (not to be confused with YYT's People's Summer Festival on Sunday, which will feature pretty much the same line up) will throw together Japan's Higuchi Makiki, Koreans Guckkasten and Half Year and Shanghai's own Wildcat for a night of, well, rock.
¥30, 9pm, 721 Kunming Lu, near Tongbei Lu, 昆明路721号近通北路

Unsurprisingly, stripped-down folk will be the name of the game down at 0093 where artists from the Su Xie*Chuan Yue collective (including Zhao Zhao, Cao Qin, Xiao Meng, Xiao Fang and friends) will be gently strumming the night away as they promote their new compilation record.
¥50, 7:30pm, 93 Lingling Lu, near Damuqiao Lu, 零陵路93号, 近大木桥路

Sunday
We've been boring people to tears telling them just how amazing that Mushrooms show at YYT the other week was so it's probably a good idea for you to check them out yourself in a bid to shut us up. They'll be heading up YYT's People's Summer Festival which also features Higuchi Makiki, Guckkasten and Wildcat if you missed them the night before at Live Bar.
¥40, 9pm, 1731 Yan'an Xi Lu (entrance on Kaixuan Lu), 延安西路1731号 (入口在凯旋路)

Monroe Stahr and Black Luna will be among the highlights as Music Matters hold their Longest Day party over at WTF in the Red Town space. They're just two acts that will be performing during the day which offers a marathon 12 hours (at least) of entertainment spanning from rock to jazz to DJs to African drum music to hip hop to...
¥150 (includes all you can drink), 2pm, WTF Club, Red Town, 570 Huaihai Xi Lu, near Dingxi Lu. 淮海西路570号，近定西路

East District Power, the folk-rock collective who draw their boundaries as "west from Hongkou, east to Zhongyuan, no further south than Huangxing Park and no further north than Jiangwan", will be making a rare visit to a central venue when they hit LOgO - a great opportunity to catch this elusive collection of singer songwriters.
Free, 9pm, 13 Xingfu Lu, near Fahuazhen Lu. 幸福路13号, 近法华镇路

L'Ocelle Mare (actually solo guitarist Thomas Bonvalet) will be over at 021 meanwhile. If we tell you that he recently supported Glorious Pharmacy's Xiao He when he toured Europe, you'll know to expect avant-garde acoustica.
¥30, 9pm, 2925 Yangshupu Lu, near Dinghai Lu, 杨树浦路2925号, 近定海路

Video: Joyside's Dong Dong Dong at D22 gives you an idea of the crush to expect at YYT

Live Trip into Sherwood Dub Forest Tonight

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

The merry men of Uprooted Sunshine bring long-standing dub pioneer Adrian Sherwood for a live trip deep into Dub forest tonight at Shelter.

For fans of the dub genre, Sherwood needs no introduction - he has been an integral part of the scene for nearly three decades, working with many of the reggae and dub greats, such as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Prince Far I, Mikey Dread, Sly & Robbie, Dennis Bovell and Bim Sherman to name but a few.

But in case you're not so familiar with the name, Sherwood has remixed a whole host of top international acts such as Coldcut, Depeche Mode, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Sinéad O'Connor, and Skinny Puppy. You may also have heard of On-U Sound Records... it's Sherwood's label.

There aren't many acts who have been at the forefront of of a musical movement for 30 years and there are even fewer who make it to Shanghai to perform live. For a more in-depth read of the man and his achievements, check out his interview with uncarved.org. And then come to his show tonight.

Shanghai By Bus presents: Adrian Sherwood
With Drunk Monk, Deville, dji, Boombadil, MC ChaCha, MC Didje, MC Esia, MC Arminda
Tonight at 10pm.
At The Shelter, 5 Yongfu Lu near Fuxing Xi Lu.
50rmb on the door

Family planning now extending to dogs in Guangzhou

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Get ready to say goodbye to Fido... if he's the second dog you have.

As Guangzhou prepares for the 2010 Asian Games, a new policy will be implemented on July 1 that allows only one dog per household. The measure is meant to standardize the pet-raising industry, as well as control stray dogs and rabies and hopefully lead to cleaner streets.

Cities like Beijing have long had one-dog policies in place. But because the policy will not be slowly introduced into Guangzhou, families with more than one canine will be forced to choose (pretty quickly) which pet they love more and which gets thrown to the streets. Anyone found breaking the rules will be fined up to 2,000 yuan. Understandably, the regulations are being met with lots of resentment.

While it is unknown how hard the government plans on enforcing these rules, many citizens are already searching for loopholes around the new policy. One woman said she plans on registering her second dog under the her parents' name, adding, "When the people at the top make a policy, the people at the bottom find a way to get around it."

Still, vets in Guangzhou say they are already fearing a spike in abandoned dogs come July. We think it's a crying shame that the Guangzhou government has chosen this route rather than trying to educate the populace about more proper dog care.

With more people coming into middle-class status and buying pets, many dog owners are still unaware of the benefits of spaying and neutering their new companions. Many dogs are also not vaccinated, leading to the euthanization of thousands of dogs last month in the wake of a rabies scare.

As far as we know, Shanghai pet owners are still free to have multiple dogs. Hopefully the changes in Guangzhou don't move north, or else a certain Shanghaiist editor is going to have to pick his favorite.

Photo by lajollabiker

Whats up with the Electrograss Festival? UPDATED

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

UPDATE: sometimes-contributor Sam Jacobs wrote in to tell us exactly what was up with the Electrograss festival:

The Electrograss festival happened at the same venue last year and for those who missed it it was a nicely organized little event (it was called Electro Trash that time around).
This year promises to be a bit bigger with over 20 DJ's playing a wide variety of music (3 are listed on the flyer because one of the organizers, DJ Mr Tsang has a weird sense of humor). Yes there is a chance of rain tomorrow night, but the venue is an old mansion on Donghu Lu with indoor and outdoor space.

The entrance is kind of opposite Element Fresh. There's more info on the Facebook page or just call Mr Tsang on his personal cell phone number and bother him about stuff: 15921982290

Well there you go. Now you know.

We recently stumbled upon what seems like it could be a fun way to spend Saturday evening: a festival called "Electrograss" that's featuring three kinds of electronic music.

In room one we have: Hip-hop/breaks/funk
Behind door two there is: Electro/house
And outside in the grass arena you've got: Beats/jazz

But strangely for something billing itself as a "festival," we can't seem to find much more information about the event. Besides the contact number of the flyer for The Source (158 Xinle Lu near Donghu Lu), which said that pre-sale tickets are 60RMB, details are surprisingly scarce.

Based on a lack of solid details and the strong likelihood of a thunderstorm on Saturday night, PLUS the fact that Donghu Hotel (the venue) seemed to have no idea that it was going on (though that could've been because of a clueless receptionist), it might be best to wait this one out and pay the 90RMB on the door.

Where's the door? At 70 Donghu Lu near HuaiHai Lu.

Interview Safety Scissors cuts to the chase

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

San Francisco-based Safety Scissors (http://www.myspace.com/safetyscissorsmusic) brings his "minimal techno"/electronic pop music to China for the first time. Where: The Shelter (5 Yongfu Lu near Fuxing Xi Lu, 永福路5号) Starts: Saturday, June 20th, 10PM Cover: 40rmb For more local events, visit the Shanghaiist Calendar.

Matthew Curry, also known as Safety Scissors, told us his roots in minimal techno music began early - he was allegedly listening to his mother’s heartbeat before leaving the womb.

When pressed to name something a little more believable - he cited Bach. That’s right, Johann Sebastian Bach of The Musical Offering fame. The combination of these two influences helped it all come together for him the first time he went to a rave in Midwest America.

So pre-natal heartbeats, Baroque composers and Midwestern raves (“while wearing pants too big,” he added)… anything else? Curry said he loved Brian Eno: “It's the perfect blend of pushing the envelope but still being pop music.”

This amalgamation of cheekiness peppered with moments of sincerity was a running theme throughout our talk. When asked how he came up with his “combinations,” he answered, "My lock combinations for my locker in high school? They were all sequenced through decoding Bach's fugues put through the Enigma machine."

Ha ha. No seriously. "My music combinations are all just made from things I enjoy and are important to me. I get lots of the core ideas of songs while walking around the city...then I'll pound my head against them for a long time in many cases."

Curry told us his music had evolved over time. As he began to experiment with more than just techno, his music began to swerve slightly more to the pop side. "Since I didn't know much about traditional music when I started I made techno then as I learned more I was able to evolve that into more pop things with melodies. My music is still somewhere in between,” he said.

There is no time limit on how long it takes to make a song he said, "How long is a piece of string? It can take five seconds to five years."

An artist that has influenced him the most is . "It's the perfect blend of pushing the envelope but still being pop music," said Curry.

His music has evolved over time as he has begun to experiment with more than just techno, "Since I didn't know much about traditional music when I started I made techno then as I learned more I was able to evolve that into more pop things with melodies. My music is still somewhere in between."

He didn‘t quite have a favorite song of his own, admitting that sometimes he felt a little self-conscious about his own creations… at least for a bit. "I don't know if I like any of the music I have made but then sometimes a song will come up randomly in iTunes and I'll say " 'Hey, what's that?', thinking it sounds kind of neat, then I sheepishly realize it is me and think it's not too bad."

We think it’s much better than just “not too bad,” and we’re glad he’s enthusiastic about playing to us at Shelter on Saturday. He told us he was “incredibly excited! I'm trying to assess people's relationship to music but no matter what that is I hope they are excited to see me. Again, fun is a key word here and I hope they can hear that in my music."

Don't miss his live performance Saturday night, June 20 @ The Shelter. Located at 5 Yongfu Lu near Fuxing Xi Lu, 永福路5号. Cover is 40 RMB.

Todays Links Newt Gingrich comments on Uighurs while China comments on the US

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Audit Finds Beijing Games Produced Surplus [Wall Street Journal] "The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics produced a surplus of about 1.16 billion yuan ($171 million), according to the latest audit issued Friday by China's National Audit Office. Revenue from the Olympics, which China hosted for the first time in August, totaled CNY20.5 billion and expenditure totaled CNY19.34 billion, according to the auditor's report."
Gingrich comments on Uighurs don’t sit well with some in GOP [Freep] "Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich got into a public spat with fellow Republicans this week after he denounced the 17 Chinese Muslims who are being released from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison as 'terrorists' who should be sent back to China, where they’re likely to face persecution."
The U.S.: Always Making Trouble For China [Forbes] "Instead of offering the usual foreign-correspondent musings about China, Forbes invited an outspoken Chinese essayist to take a few shots at the U.S. and the rest of the West. Wang Xiaodong, a researcher at the Communist Youth League-affiliated China Youth and Children Research Center, urges that China strengthen its military and stand up to the U.S."
China Warns Google Over Porn Links [PC World] "Google promised to step up control of 'vulgar' online search results in China late Thursday, after a government-backed arbiter warned that its filtering of pornography was too weak."
'Angels & Demons' to close Shanghai fest [Hollywood Reporter] "The studio is hoping that a positive reception for the movie will ease its passage through censorship and approval, enabling it to bag one of the 20 slots per year in the country's import quota. 'The Da Vinci Code' was released in China, although films with religious themes are not always approved for distribution."
Watchdog set up, no more casting couch in China TV industry[Global Times] "TV wannabes have often to end up in a relationship with directors and producers to get work. 'These practices among some of our directors have harmed the development of the whole industry,' said Chen. Apart from clearing up the industry, the committee will also focus on protecting the rights of TV drama directors."

Tonight IDM Music by Length will rock and shock Shanghai

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

18-year-old Length, from Changsha, has promised to play something completely different from what you usually hear.

His genre of music, called Intelligent Dance Music, is an extremely popular music genre in Japan. Prepare your ears for tonight with Length at 9:00PM at Shelter by listening to him here.

We did a phone interview with Length while he was preparing for another show in Hangzhou last night.

Joining Safety Scissors, Length will be performing his brand of intelligent dance music tonight at The Shelter.
Where: The Shelter (5 Yongfu Lu near Fuxing Xi Lu, 永福路5号)
Starts: Saturday, June 20, 9:30PM
Cover: 40 RMB
For more local events, visit the Shanghaiist Calendar.

Welcome to Shanghai! Is this your first time here?

L (Length): Thanks. No, I have come to Shanghai before. This Febuary 14th, I performed with a Swiss DJ and some local Shanghainese DJs at Shelter, brought by Antidote, as well.

How did you get into being a DJ?

L: Well, strictly speaking, I am not a DJ, I am a producer. I make my own music instead of playing others' songs. I have been making my own genre of music for the last 4 or 5 years. I have been exposed to Rock music when I was little and fell in love with the music immediately. When I was in high school, I formed a band and played guitar.

Afterwards, I joint a very famous band in China called 48Volt. I was a keyboarder in the band and we played post-rock music. However, I left the band because that I wanted a busier and more independent life. I formed an electronics music band called Sugarcane Radio before as well.

But your music is not exactly electronics. How would you describe your type of music? How did you involved with IDM?

L: My music, IDM - Intellegent Dance Music, is very unique in China. Not many musicians are producing this genre but it has been very popular in Japan for a long time. I got involved with IDM because I like the softness of this kind of music. It is not purely dance nor relaxing music. It is a mix. A good metaphor would be that the dance music is flood while mine is a streamlet.

We know that you are from Changsha. Is there you grew up color what you produce?

L: Yes, definitely. I actually grew up around Ye Lu Mountain, a mountain with long histories involved with Chairman Mao. I like the plants, animals, water, everything in the mountain. All these things influenced me to produce a sensitive but romantic genre of music.

Nonetheless, I like technology as well. The best way to combine the nature and technology is to produce my IDM. You will hear a very different kind of music tonight.

You may be one of the youngest music producers in China since you are only 18! How did your parents feel about your interest in music?

L: This is a very good question. Actually, I am a first-year student at Hu Nan University and majoring in Finance. I have good grades at school so my parents don't mind me to play music. They doubt if I will be a professional music producer in the future and I understand where they come from. I study hard at college to set my parents' mind at rest. However, my music accomplishments don't excite them so much as my good grades.

So, what do you think of the music scene here in China?

L: I think there are two biggest problems in Chinese music scene. The first one is that people do not value musicians that much. As compared with other countries, musicians are under-valued in China; they normally do not have good pay nor good respect from people.

The second one is the lack of copyrights of original music. For example, even CCTV uses music originally produced by the musicians without any notifications. Also, we are playing too much of western music; we seldom have our own club music.

They do seem like serious problems! What is your goal in the near future? Do you think your line of music's gotten more popular?

L: I will definitely continue producing and bringing good music out to people. I believe that when the electronic music matures in China, my music will get more popular. "Mature" means when Chinese will appreciate music produced by Chinese musicians instead of only western ones. We need to develop our own music environment in China rather than just copying from other countries.

Wow, how very impressive! You indeed have deep thoughts about our music. Ok, one last question, what will you be up to once you head back to Changsha?

L: I will go back to study and finish my first year of college. More importantly, I will experiment and produce better and better music. I hope that I will come to Shanghai again soon! At last, many thanks to Antidote for bringing me here!

It is very unusual to see an 18-year-old boy could think so deeply! Let us listen to his music tonight and fall in love with this new genre, IDM.

Photos Nosaj Things debut album release show

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Last Friday at Yuyintang, Nosaj Thing shone in his beat-heavy live set laced with synth sounds and slaps amid an obvious underlying hip hop influence. He worked the Akai Mpd-32 controller, laptop and audio interface and yes the crowd lapped it up.

We are a little unsure of Yuyintang as choice of venue for electronic music sets since the stage setup is really more suitable for live band performances. Lack of space and poor ventilation only meant it was near impossible to dance (or do any sort of electro head-bobbing) as everyone got hot and sweaty (in an unglamorous fashion). Couldn't hang out at the bar either as that was part of the traffic-heavy corridor between entrance and main room. No wonder everyone escaped out to the garden in the back the moment the show ended.

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Thirteen killed in Tehran clashes

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Thirteen people have been killed in clashes between terrorist groups and police, a report of the Iranian state television said on Sunday. The TV report also said that rioters had set two gas stations on fire and attacked a military...

Emerging Water Industries in Greece

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

By Ioannis Michaletos*

Water management is attracting the attention of businessmen in Greece, especially when it is related to the water cycle and energy production. Dams, water transmission pipelines, water depots, and seawater desalination plants are all included in the five-year plan that the Karamanlis administration has relayed recently to the press, as a plan to develop this very lucrative sector.

Greece’s national plan was drafted by the Ministry of Public Works, along with the national Directorate of Hydro-management and the Athens National Technical University.

This national program includes both large and small hydro-projects, since Greece has significant hydrodynamic potential, most of which is concentrated in the western and northern sections of the country, where major rivers such as the Acheloos, Arachthos, Aoos, Haliakmon, Stymonas and Nestos flow. At the same time, Greece makes excessive use of electricity, almost 40% more than any of its Balkan neighbors. Greece also imports substantial amounts of electricity per annum, especially from Bulgaria.

Most European countries have reached the highest potential of their hydrodynamic reserves. Greece is an exception; only one-third of the economically exploitable hydrodynamic resources are being exploited. Therefore, the country has significant unused domestic reserves, and can thus create a long-term strategy in this field.

The National Program Management and Protection of Water Resources includes measures for better distribution of water in the 14 designated water departments in the country, which, as announced by Minister George Souflias, include large and small projects for water diversions or transfers and for electricity production. These projects include around 22 large hydroelectric structures and about 300 small hydropower ones.

In order to meet the needs of the more arid regions of the country, a system of small and large dams along the rivers and pipelines transporting water from one water compartment to another will be constructed. For coastal areas and islands, seawater desalination plants have already started to be built, some of them using hybrid technology, meaning they are powered by renewable energy resources such as solar and wind power.

These major projects will be designed so as not to disturb the water balance areas. Yet all the evidence suggests that this is inevitable, as water in the coming years will become a more precious and expensive commodity than oil.

The diversion of the Acheloos River to the Thessaly region has almost been completed, at a cost of over 700 million euros. As a consequence Thessaly’s farmers will enjoy a significant boost in their production (mostly wheat, corn, potato and cotton), with a 300 MW electricity production facility.

The water department with the largest surplus is West Central Greece, while the deficit is evident in Thessaly. Other departments with water deficit are the Eastern Peloponnese and the Aegean islands.

With Greece’s current pace of growth, it is calculated that by 2030 the northern Peloponnese, eastern and central Greece, Attica, central Macedonia and Thrace will start facing problems, if the government’s envisioned plans are not implemented. For the time being, the wet winter of 2008-09 has resulted in a spectacular increase in water reserves to such an extent that there are plans to export water to the Middle East. Last year Greece exported water to Cyprus when the latter faced a drought.

Today, the main issues associated with water management in Greece are:

-unequal distribution of water resources in western Greece due to heavy rainfall in comparison with the eastern parts;

-the uneven seasonal distribution of water resources, winter being the only significant rainy period;

unequal distribution of water demand in the country, with Attica, Thessaloniki and Patras requiring most of the resources during winter, in addition to the most visited tourist islands of the Aegean in the summer;

-leaks in water distribution networks, affecting up to 20% of pipeline networks, pose an additional problem and require new pipeline infrastructure.

Already, Greece has reached scientific and bi-governmental agreements with the EU countries plus Iceland in order to import much needed know-how regarding water management issues.

It is telling that the country is ranked in the last place among 24 European and Mediterranean countries, having at present only 46 large dams. Spain (ranked 1st) has 1196, followed by Turkey with 625, France with 569, and Italy with 524.

The Greek government moreover is now geared to privatize segments of the hydro-infrastructure. The water and sewerage companies in both Athens and Thessaloniki are high on the list next to privatization.

The Ministry of Finance seems to be planning a gradual reduction in the percentage held and in the state companies EYDAP (Athens) and EYATH (Thessaloniki). Currently, the government holds 70% of the share capital of EYDAP (60% government and 10% of the ATE state bank) and over 70% of EYATH. According to all available information those percentages will fall to 40% by next year. The capitalization of the former is around 400 million euros, and of EYATH, around 200 million euros.

Already, French multinational Suez Environment has expressed keen interest to invest in Greek companies. Since both of them hold significant real estate along the two biggest Greek cities, there are ample opportunities for investing in the sewage management sector, the next big thing in the contemporary “Green business” trend. Certainly, the water business is going to become a well known feature in Greece and elsewhere in the Balkans, as major investors start to move into an emerging and very lucrative sector.

………………………

*Frequent Balkanalysis.com contributor Ioannis Michaletos is a Balkan security analyst for the RIEAS Institute in Athens, Greece. He is also Southeastern European Coordinator and Editor for the World Security Network Foundation.

Modernism in Serbia The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture 19191941

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941

By Ljiljana Blagojevic

MIT Press (2003), 300 pp.

Reviewed by Christopher Deliso

Architecture has long commanded public attention in the Balkans. Swedish diplomats lament the low-quality granite used not long ago to create public thoroughfares in Kosovo – itself an experiment in building – and organized debates are sparked by talk of an enormous Alexander the Great statue in Skopje.

Given the continuing controversy that characterizes much of the dialogue around architecture in the Balkans today, it is a bit refreshing to take a moment out and appreciate the achievements of an earlier time, the controversies surrounding which have long subsided.

As such, readers may turn to Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941, an attractively designed tome that’s a mix between textbook and coffee-table set piece. From the minimalist font (Gotham) cloaking taut prose to the exacting sketches of once-experimental constructions, the book reflects the aesthetic of the early 20th-century structures pictured in the book, many of which have not survived or are in disrepair.

By any standard, this is a remarkable book. Written by Serbian architect and Belgrade University lecturer Ljiljana Blagojevic, Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941 is much more than a treatise on old buildings and their structural integrity. Indeed, it has just as much to do with defining the intellectual integrity of those who envisioned, designed and agitated for the building of livable urban artworks which, by virtue of their very existence, reflected specific currents in philosophical thought.

Whether or not one likes the architecture itself, in this era of cheap (though expensive) nationalist kitsch and the apparently unstoppable reflective blue glass that forms the outer shield of so many Balkan urban buildings today, one has to admire the Serbian modernists for at least trying to be guided by loftier thoughts.

To be sure, this is a book that is on the must-read list for students of architecture and Balkan urbanists, though for this reason it will appeal to anyone intrigued by the history of thought and social movements in the modern Balkans. And it makes for an attractive and useful conversation-starter if spread discreetly across one’s coffee table when, say, trying to impress a first-time date.

The author tells the story of Belgrade Modernist architecture in five carefully composed chapters, beginning with the context of the outside (mainly, French) condescension of local architecture in the period of the Balkan Wars through to the dwindling of Modernism following the ascendancy of Tito and his Communist ethos.

Along the way, Blagojevic documents the works and tells the fascinating personal stories of the major architects, men such as Nikola Dobrovic, Dragisa Brasovan and Milan Zlokovic. She also follows the course of the intellectual movements (such as Zenitism) which captivated such figures and inspired them to rebel against their confines, thus telling an intimate story that has never been told, using images that have never been seen outside of Serbia (in some cases, not at all).

Along with the numerous illustrations, there are extensive tables with population and construction statistics, indicating the author’s multi-dimensional approach to considering architecture in light of the broader socio-economic development of the Serbian capital. Her text is thus useful to a wider range of social scientists.

In conclusion, this book is a real pleasure to read, or just admire. It is wittier than might be expected, and especially fascinating when quoting the architects and foreigners alike; their observations and interpretations of life in the Balkans, as seen through a common focus on aesthetics, add to the greater historical record and attest to the final era in which humans would prize qualitative, rather than quantitative values highest of all. That said, though Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941 is not an inexpensive book, it is one to have and to hold.

Exploring Byzantine Cartographies Ancient Science Christian Cosmology and Geopolitics in Byzantine Imperial Mapping

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

By Alex G. Papadopoulos, Ph.D.

Department of Geography

DePaul University, Chicago

This short paper on Byzantine maps and geographic science was born out of a conversation with Christopher Deliso, director of Balkanalysis.com. We agreed that there is a need to look at southeastern Europe - the Balkans - from a spatial (geographical) analytical perspective. Our understanding of the region’s historic and contemporary nationalisms, its ethnoreligious and ethnolinguistic identities, and the statecraft that defines the region’s geopolitical peculiarities, can be improved by studies of the production of cultural and political spaces (territorial states, homelands, heritage spaces, symbolic landscapes, and pre-modern Empires, to name a few). I would like to start that conversation about Balkan spaces by looking at Byzantine cartography and geographic theory as political, cultural, and scientific products that shaped and continue to shape our perception of the region.

I suggest that the manner in which Byzantines and others conceptualized geographical space in both symbolic and practical terms has much to do with the way territories were scripted and integrated into cosmological, Earth-based, regional, and political worldviews.

More importantly for us today, geographic and cartographic thinking of, and artifacts that date from, antiquity to the modern era have at some times informed about, and at other times attempted to obscure, the ground truth in the service of politics, power, and ideology. My tasks here are to untangle and describe to the reader a set of geographic and cartographic traditions that, although situated in the remote past, constitute root sources for the way the Byzantines looked at the World, generally, and their region in particular.

The question of chronological provenance

Some clarification about terms: A traditional approach to classifying the maps and their provenance chronologically as “Eastern Roman” and subsequently “Byzantine” would be to adopt as a time frame the establishment of Constantine the Great’s reign (324CE) to the fall of Constantinople (1453CE). There are some pitfalls, however, to adopting a rigid chronological frame, and situating these artifacts and theories firmly as byproducts of the societies and polities of those centuries.

To put it simply, one of the most important lessons of studying Byzantine cartography as science, and Byzantine maps, as material objects, is the diachronic character and influence of the source material on which they were based:

For example, Classical, Hellenistic, and imperial Roman geographic knowledge and science need to be understood as a continuous scientific tradition, expressed through the thought and works of Anaximander (610-546 BCE) (figure 1a), Hecateus of Miletus (c. 550-476 BCE), Herodotus (c. 484-425 BCE), Eratosphenes of Cyrene (276-195 BCE), Strabo (c. 63 BCE-24 CE), and Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90-168 CE) to name some of the most important.

Critically important for us, cartographic works and theories of this long-standing scholarly tradition contributed greatly to geographic and cartographic concepts of the Middle Ages in Europe’s West, in the Roman and Byzantine East, and in the Arab World after the 7th century CE.

Standing on the shoulders of pre-Socratic and Classical scholars, Claudius Ptolemy’s work can easily be counted as the most influential. Grounded far more on empiricism than religious symbolism, his Geography dominated regional cartography and scores of derivative portolan (navigation) cartography into the 16th c. Known to Arab scholars and cartographers, the Ptolemaic opus reaches Florence ca. 1400 and revolutionizes cartography in the West (figure 2).

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 may be construed sensu stricto as the end of Byzantine scientific study of geography, and the culmination of Byzantine cartographic production. Yet, it would be an error not to consider and assess the influence of Byzantine émigré scholars, like Gemistus Pletho who lectured in the 1430s in Florence before returning to Mystra in the Peloponessus, and Markos Mousouros and Zacharias Kallergis, who taught in Rome’s Quirinal College in the early 1500s, where publisher and cartographer Nikolaos Sophianos was a student.

These men were representatives of a learned elite with strong intellectual, and at times, political links to the fallen Byzantine State. Many of them settled in centers of learning in Italy-Rome, Venice, and Florence-in the decades after the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-39) attempted the union of the Western and Eastern Churches into an Oecumenical church.

As far as the transmission of geographical knowledge from Byzantium to Italy is concerned, there are significant examples: For example, the scholar Gemistus Pletho was significantly responsible for re-introducing Strabo to the West through his scientific treatise of Strabo’s Geography. The treatise is preserved in Codex Marcianus graec. 379, in St. Mark’s Library, Venice, which most likely belonged to Pletho’s famous student Basil Bessarion (Diller, 1937: 441-2).

Sophianos’ immensely influential map Totius Graeciae Descriptio, which George Tolias describes as “a visual digest of Greece”, synthesizes two regional maps from Ptolemy’s “Geographia” Tabulae Europae IX and X), contemporary information from portolan (navigation) maps, and narrative and toponymic information from Pausanius’ 2^nd-century “Description of Greece”, as well as earlier geographical information from Herodotus and Thucydides (Tolias, 2006: 163) (figure 3).

The question of geographical provenance

Issues surrounding the geographical rather than simply the chronological provenance of Byzantine maps and geographical theories are equally vexing and require us, again, to think beyond the mere location of a map’s original publication. Moreover, the location where the object map is catalogued and archived may be the furthest removed from where it was created: Edson and Savage Smith study the so-called “Astrologer’s Map”, one of the earliest ancient Greek maps of the world (c. end of the 5th-beginning of the 6th c. CE) that was discovered among Greek astrological texts bound in the midst of an Arabic manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Marsh 42) (Edson and Savage-Smith 2000:7) (figure 4).

In fact, the map’s life-path may have been rather complex. It may have originated in Alexandria, was consulted and - given its symbolic rather than practical nature - used in rituals. And it was possibly owned by a number of patrons across the Mediterranean, until it was collected in an Arab library, and ultimately acquired by an Orientalist scholar who donated it to the Bodleian. Context is frequently critical for determining provenance, although context does not help in the case of the Astrologer’s Map.

Although I would rather not confuse the reader further, I should note that when it comes to the production, distribution, and consumption of Byzantine maps, traditional territorial definitions of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empires get in the way. Conventionally, following the Tetrarchy - the Roman Empire under Emperor Diocletian was divided into a Western and an Eastern one. Following the establishment of Constantinian rule, the geographic footprint of the Eastern Empire waxed and waned significantly, assuming its maximal territorial extent under Eastern Roman qua Byzantine rule during the reign of Justinian I (c. 482-565 CE) (figure 5).

Starting with Emperor Heraclius’ reign, the now Hellenized Eastern Empire (575-641 CE) faced increasing territorial challenges from Visigoths and Lombards in the West, Avars and Bulgars in the North, and Saracens and Persians in the East.

Further, the establishment of the Arab Empire in the 7th century initiated a period of great intercourse between Hellenic and Arabic scholarship, inclusive of geography and cartography. After the Arab conquest of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Ptolemy’s seminal 2nd century CE geographic and cartographic opus becomes the object of systematic study and elaboration by Arab cartographers, astronomers, and mathematicians.

Periodically pushing back successfully against a growing number of geopolitical competitors, as during the reigns of Basil II and John II Komnenos, but more often losing territories to them, by the middle of the 15th c. the territorial extent of the Byzantine state was greatly diminished, comprising essentially the imperial capital city of Constantinople, and a number of fortified exclaves in mainland Greece. Thus, the dynamic movement of political boundaries and frontiers during the eleven centuries of Byzantine political and cultural life, but more importantly, the mobility of scholars and cartographers across political territories in flux, make for unreliable markers of geographic provenance of maps that are generally attributable to Byzantine cartography and geographic science.

Ultimately, the geographies of Byzantine map production, use, and collection point to five contexts: the imperial and Arab administrations in the East, great monastic libraries like those on Mt. Athos and the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai, scholarly collections, private collections of maps of essentially antiquarian value, and merchants and transport concerns that used specialist maps (such as navigational ones). Among all these contexts, it is libraries that at times have been best able to fix in time and space these rare and enigmatic maps.

Fortunately, there are times when geographic provenance could not be clearer: when the map is integrated into the structure of a building, it may endure for hundreds of years beyond the people and the state that produced it. There are at least two such Byzantine maps that are worthy of mention. The mosaic floor map in the church of St. Doumetios (a three-aisled basilica dated to c. 550-575 CE) in Epirus, Greece, is an example of cosmological mapping that interweaves elements of ancient Greek and Christian symbolic geographies. The St. Doumetios mosaic map strains our cartographic imagination (figure 6). As creatures of modernity we would not call that beautiful mosaic a map, since we commonly think of maps as two-dimensional scaled representations of the surface of the Earth. It is also very unlikely that a European map collector of the 16th or 17th century would be able to make sense of this mosaic as map.

For these Early Moderns, cartography was already substantially a science of statecraft, war, mercantile capitalism, and a visualization tool of the new physiographic sciences. But for a 6th century Byzantine person, the mosaic would have been easily identifiable as a map - the Christian cosmos as interpreted through Greek cartographic science. Drawing on the ancient tradition of Anaximander and Eratosthenes (figure 1), the artist-cartographer surrounds the “oecoumene” (the inhabited Earth represented as the world of living being-trees and animals), by a stylized rendition of Oceanus (the impassable ocean that circumscribes the inhabited world, as well as lands in the South, either inhabited by non-human creatures, or devoid of life).

The inscription leaves little to doubt: Kitzinger translates it as “The boundless ocean having in its midst the earth” (Kitzinger, 1973: 370). The 6th c. mosaicist thus marries artistic and aesthetic media of the pre-Christian world, with Christian imagery. Kitzinger continues that “the idea of the earth in the midst of the ocean is conveyed by means of the classical device of an emblema (or panel picture) surrounded by an elaborate frame” (ibid). He likens it to a later, highly decorative example of floor map from the Romanesque Church of St. Salvatore, Turin: “a decorator’s paraphrase of a world map” (Ibid).

Another example of monumental cartography can be found in the contemporaneous mosaic representation of Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean, located in the apse of the church of Saint George at Madaba, Jordan. That floor mosaic comes closer to our idea of a map, though geographic accuracy is not the artist-cartographer’s objective. Depicting a substantial region that spanned an area from Lebanon to the Nile Delta in the south, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Syrian desert, the mosaic maps some 150 biblical cities and towns, labeled in Greek. Sites like Jericho and Bethlehem would have been familiar to Christian pilgrims (figure 7). The monumental map of an important part of the Christian world would have been trodden by worshippers, perhaps as a reminder of the mundane character of the physical earth.

Above the mosaic, the Church of St. George (Kitzinger claims it is dedicated to St. John) would have soared over the heads of the worshippers, representing the higher moral sphere (Donner, 1992: 3-5). I would suggest that the Madaba mosaic map can be linked to a particular Christian exegesis of the universe - one that would have been consistent with the Eastern Syrian and Antiochene view of Christianity that influenced another very important Byzantine map, the Christian Topography of Cosmas, the so-called Indicopleustes (Kominko 2005: 164).

In the case of a vastly different object, manuscript MS 1851 from the Codices Vaticani graeci (Biblioteca Vaticana), dated with confidence to the year 1179, we know with certainty the point of origin and destination. Hilsdale describes it as “a small and intimate book whose simplified vernacular voice, large, clear script, and detailed miniature cycle suggest that it was intended for Agnes’s young eyes alone” (Hilsdale 2005: 477). This extraordinary object that contains stylized, landscape-oriented maps of Constantinople, was intended for the Princess Agnes, daughter of Adèle de Champagne and Louis VII of France who wed Alexios, the purple-born son of Emperor Manuel II Komnenos.

The title of Hilsdale’s work (”Constructing a Byzantine Augusta: A Greek Book for a French Bride”) captures and interprets the complexity of design and discourse that define this manuscript. Intended as a manual on Byzantine imperial etiquette as well as an introduction to the Byzantine “topos” over which she was one day to reign, the book is rich in narrative descriptions, visual storyboards, and stylized illustrations of the capital city (figure 8).

What this little book for the future Augusta did was to create a cognitive map of Byzantine imperial life and space. Although the visual vignettes may not be immediately interpreted as “maps” by a modern person, these landscapes have the same effect of fixing Byzantine geographies (the city, landmark buildings, the spatial organization of the palace, as well as the micro-geographies of body posture and ritual precedence in court ceremonies) in word and image for a foreign princess.

In this case, “topography” becomes “cartography,” and finally becomes a princely education. Her actual arrival on imperial lands was at the city of Thessaloniki, where she was celebrated with an oration by Eustathios, former Master of the Rhetors and Archbishop of that city. The oration has been preserved as Madrid MS Esc. Gr. 265 [Y.II.10] fols 368-372 (Real Biblioteca de El Escorial Vol. 2 [Madrid, 1965] pp. 120-131).

As Hilsdale reports, by all indications, her transformation from Agnes, Princess of France into Anna, Byzantine Augusta was successful. Robert of Clari recounts her encounter with French Crusaders in 1203, to who she refused to identify herself as anything but a Byzantine Empress: Clari reported [ele][sic] “ne voloit parler a aus, ainsi I faisoit parler un latimier, et disoit li latimiers qu’ele ne savoit nient de Franchois” (Lauer, 1924: 54, in Hilsdale, 483).

In sum, then, there is often a compelling mystery that surrounds the study of geographic origin and provenance of Byzantine maps. That mystery has to do with the mobility of these objects from the earliest years of the empire but especially following the Latin conquest of Byzantium (1204-1261). Political and military expediency, the vanity and often greed of collectors abroad, the taste for illuminated Byzantine manuscripts, and the desire of Western scholars to access Greek and Arabic classical knowledge produced a massive outflow vectored West. Stories of commerce and conquest may best explain why there are only a few hundred Greek manuscripts in Istanbul today, while the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Biblioteca Laurenziana and the Biblioteca Nazionale dei San Marco, among other Western libraries with Byzantine holdings, catalogue more than 5,200 manuscripts (Nelson, 1995: 209).

At times, émigré Greeks, like Nikolaos Sophianos, would travel to Ottoman-occupied Greece to purchase Byzantine-era manuscripts. Based on a letter by G.B. Amalteo to Paolo Manuzio (27 February 1561) we know that Sophianos traveled to monasteries in Thessaly and Mount Athos between February and September 1543, acquiring some 300 manuscripts for a Spanish collector (Diller, 1937 in Tolias 2006: 172). Tolias further informs us that Sophianos’ manuscript hoard included “mathematical and minor geographical treatises, such as Agathemerus’ Diagnosis and Hypotyposis, and the first lines of Dionysius Byzantius’ navigation of the Bosporus” (Tolias 2006: 152). The complexity of the geographies of Byzantine map production, consumption, and collection speak of a Mediterranean world, at least, that was a highly integrated commercial, security and intellectual space, at least until the consolidation of Ottoman power in the east.

Suggesting a Byzantine map taxonomy

We have already noted the challenges of establishing chronological and geographical provenance in Byzantine map connoisseurship. We will bracket these challenges for now, and focus on the basic taxonomy of maps we accept as either putatively or specifically Byzantine: One important taxonomic variable is ’scale’ - mappae mundi or world maps constituting an important map class. There are cases where maps at a larger geographical scale (depicting regional detail), such as the later Sophianos map of the Greek world, would be based on a section of a mappa mundi.

Although there is high quality scholarship on specific medieval qua Byzantine map objects, especially since the benighted, and orientalist writings of C. Raymond Beazley at the end of the 19th century, there has been little work done on building a sensible and comprehensive taxonomy of this cartographical heritage, that would allow researchers, including social scientists who are not, for example, trained Byzantinists or papyrologists, to use these objects for a deeper analytical understanding of the Byzantine spaces and their relation to the world.

Equally critical variables are the types of use intended for the map: We can visualize a number of binary or spectral classifications that would describe the map’s original versus derivative character, its symbolic versus empirical nature, its organizational structure, its intended and/or actual use or instrumentality, its situational context, and the media in which the map was produced.

Within the context of mappae mundi, and maps which are derivative from them, we can discern a significant map population distribution across a spectrum: maps of a symbolic, ritualistic qua religious, or magical/astronomical character and uses occupy one side of the spectrum, and maps of a non-religious, pseudo-scientific or scientific, and instrumental character (for example, maps in the service of navigation, travel, location of cities and towns, political-administrative divisions) collectively describe the opposite end.

For the sake of our scientific conversation, I list below some possible pillars of a practical taxonomy:

Original-Derivative: Woodward calls ‘transitional’ maps that incorporate elements of older maps into newer editions or into entirely new maps. Milanesi and others prefer the term ’synthetic’.

Visual/Graphical-Narrative: Early Christian pilgrim travel accounts are built around lists of directions, distances, and landmarks, not unlike the directions one gets with a Mapquest query today. Per Leyerly, who studied the travel narratives of the Bordeaux Pilgrim, of Egeria, and of the Piacenza Pilgrim, these lists of geographical features and landscape queues were used very much like maps, hence my decision to include them in this taxonomy.

Planned Orientation-Landscape Orientation: Planned views of the earth are conventionally considered ‘maps’, though there is significant support among both historians of cartography and geographers that landscape views (or orientation) constitute an important subclass of maps. One would readily agree with this premise if one has ever used the planispheric orientation tool in Google Earth.

Manuscript-Monumental: Byzantine-era manuscripts of all types (in papyrus, vellum, or other useable medium), number in the few thousands, which would make them rather rare. Among them there is a small number of maps and manuscripts that can be generously classified as maps (as in the case of the landscape maps of Constantinople in the Augusta book). Set apart from these portable maps, are maps integrated into buildings as murals or mosaic floors that can be best described as monumental-the Nikopolis and Madraba mosaic maps being good examples of that subtype.

Symbolic/Religious/Magical/Abstract- Empirical/Instrumental/”Realist”: Maps that resemble the Astrologer’s Map, the subclass of symbolic/cosmological maps we call “T-O” maps (the so-called Pseudo-Isidoran Vatican map (figure 9) being a mature and elaborate version of the type), the St. Doumetius mosaic floor map at Nikopolis, and the Cosmas Indicopleustes map, which draws the world as a representation of the table of Moses’ tabernacle, can be collectively described as abstract cartographic illustrations of biblical exegeses of the World.

Their taxonomic ‘antipodes’ are maps conceived and produced by cartographers, and consumed by clients, who had an interest in the mapping the surface of the planet as accurately as possible (scholar-scientists like Claudius Ptolemy, navigators who lived and died by the accuracy of their portolan maps, merchants whose wealth depended on accurate geographic and logistical information, and strategists, politicians, and administrators (including the propertied institutional Christian Churches of the East and West), who managed territories and vast properties, defended boundaries, and distributed privileges and power that were rooted largely on territorial control (figure 10).

Some preliminary conclusions

We do not know very much about Byzantine maps and Byzantine cartographic science in general. The material record is scant, many objects having been lost, destroyed, removed from their proper context (most often, to the West), or discarded when no longer useful, as is probably the case with Byzantine portolans between the second half of the 13th century and the Fall of Constantinople.

Nevertheless, there is a distinct possibility that more Byzantine manuscripts and specifically maps will be uncovered in libraries with significant historical collections, such as the Vatican Library, the Bodleian at Oxford, the National Library of Greece, and the Ataturk Library.

Yet in spite of the paucity of the material record, there is much that we can discern to build a picture of Byzantine cartography. Its connection to the mathematical, astronomical, and geographic vanguard of the Hellenistic period - the opus of Claudius Ptolemy - is unquestionable. Its basis on geographical models of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and the Classical period historians is quite evident at least in zonal and in T-O type maps. Furthermore, its interest in engaging in a biblical exegesis of the world through the medium of cartography can also be strongly supported. The use and study of landscape as spatial visualization speaks to a certain amplitude in how maps were thought of, constructed and used.

Taken as a whole, we can compose a useful, albeit incomplete picture of Byzantine geographic and cartographic science and practice. As some of the related objects traveled to Venice, Genoa, Spain, the Arab world, and beyond, to inform and influence geographic and cartographic sciences and production there, other objects became part of the scientific and artifactual world of the Ottomans and their subject people. It is reasonable to assume that Byzantine cartography, and the cartographies of Venice and Genoa through commerce and the Latin conquest of Byzantium, influenced the manner elites and everyday people visualized cartographically and modeled spatially their power position within the region we sometimes call the Balkans, within the Ottoman Empire, and in the successor states that replaced it.

………………

Sources
Bagrow, Leo. “The Origin of Ptolemy’s Geographia.” Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 27 (1945), pp. 318-387.
Beazley, C. Raymond. “New Light on Some Mediæval Maps”. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Apr., 1900), pp. 378-389.
________________. “Early Christian Geography.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series, Vol. 10 (1896), pp. 85-109.
Chekin, Leonid S. “Easter Tables and the Pseudo-Isidorean Vatican Map.” Imago Mundi, Vol. 51 (1999), pp. 13-23.
Diller, Aubrey. “A Geographical Treatise by Georgius Gemistus Pletho.” Isis, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Nov., 1937), pp. 441-451.
Edson, Evelyn; Savage-Smith, Emilie. “An Astrologer’s Map: A Relic of Late Antiquity.” Imago Mundi, Vol. 52 (2000), pp. 7-29.
Hilsdale, Cecily J. “Constructing a Byzantine Augusta: A Greek Book for a French Bride.” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 458-483.
Kitzinger, Ernst. “World Map and Fortune’s Wheel: A Medieval Mosaic Floor in Turin.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 117, No. 5 (Oct. 25, 1973), pp. 344-373.
Lauer, Philippe, ed. Robert de Clari, la conquète de Constantinople. Paris: E. Champion, 1924, p. 54.
Leyerle, Blake. “Landscape as Cartography in Early Christian Pilgrimage Narratives.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 119- 143.
Maja Kominko. “The Map of Cosmas, the Albi Map, and the Tradition of Ancient Geography”. Mediterranean Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, (2005), pp. 163-186
Milanesi, Marica. “A Forgotten Ptolemy: Harley Codex 3686 in the British Library.” Imago Mundi, Vol. 48 (1996), pp. 43-64.
Nelson, Robert S. “The Italian Appreciation and Appropriation of Illuminated Byzantine Manuscripts, ca. 1200- 1450.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 49, Symposium on Byzantium and the Italians, 13th-15th Centuries (1995), pp. 209-235.
Tolias, George. “Nikolaos Sophianos’s ‘Totius Graeciae Descriptio’: the resources, diffusion, and function of a sixteenth-century antiquarian map of Greece,” Imago Mundi, Vol. 58, no. 2 (2006), pp. 150-182.

Appendix: Illustrations

(Note: all graphics supplied courtesy of the author)

Figure 1a

Figure 1a: Anaximander’s world map

Figure 1b

Figure 1b: Eratosthenes’ world map

Figure 2

Figure 2: Ptolemy, 2nd cent. ''Map of the World.'' 1482. John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.

Figure 3

Figure 3: Nikolaos Sophianos,Totius Graeciae Descriptio (Rome, Antonio Blado, 1552). Copperplate. 4 sheets. 74x110 cm, in Tolias, 2006: 161.

Figure 4

Figure 4: The Astrologer’s map (detail). Oxford, Bodleian Library, Dept. of Oriental Collections, MS Marsh 42, fol. 4r/156. This zonal map which is oriented to the north, reflects Greek scientific understandings of the Earth as a spheroid, with cold, temperate, and ‘torrid’/tropical zones. As Edson and Savage-Smith note, ‘real’ places like Persia and the Indian Ocean are juxtaposed with mythical places in the ‘antipodes’, as well as mystico-religious places, like Hades and Hell, that suggest a degree of religious syncretism between the ancient Greco-Roman religions and Christianity.

Figure 4 (translated)

Translated version of the Astrologer's Map.

Figure 5

Figure 5: Core Byzantine Empire (green during Justinian I’s reign; consolidation of Western holdings and new acquisitions in purple).

Figure 6

Figure 6: St. Doumetius Church mosaic map of the Christian cosmos. There is a reasonable conceptual link between this apparently abstract biblical exegesis of the world, and so-called T-O mappae mundi of the same period. The “O” in “T-O” refers to the ring-shaped Oceanus that surrounds the inhabited world. We can assume that architectural and artistic license in the Nikopolis mosaic map, have shaped the Oceanus into a square.

Figure 7

Figure 7: Detail of Madaba, Jordan mosaic map, Church of St. George Source: M. Disdero, photographer, Madaba 21/02/2007 (open source). The toponymic richness of the Madaba (some 150 names of cities, towns and other features) would reasonably represent local knowledge. Locals, educated pilgrims and other travelers may have also had knowledge of Ptolemy’s “Geography”.

Figure 8

Health Care for America Now on the air in 10 states

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Health Care for America Now launched television commercials in 10 key states today (Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington). Here is one version (click here to view the others):

It's a good ad. As Jason Rosenbaum writes,

This is the vision of a public health insurance option. Contrary to Republican talking points, nothing in the proposed plans for a public health insurance option would take away your choices and your relationship with your doctor. Nothing.

If you donate at least $10 to keep this ad on the air, Health Care for America Now will send you a "high-quality, union-made t-shirt" (view the shirt here).

I'm also looking forward to seeing the commercials Blue America has in the works, which you can support by donating here.

Even if you can't afford to make a donation, you can express your support for the public option by signing the petition at StandWithDrDean.com and sending an e-mail to your senators.

It wouldn't hurt to contact your House representatives to let them know we need a public option. If the final bill out of the Senate ends up looking like the latest draft circulating in the Senate Finance Committee, we're going to need House Democrats to vote this sham reform down.

According to this diary by slinkerwink at Daily Kos, the House Democrats' draft health care plan does contain a public option. Thanks, Progressive Caucus!

Tags: health care reform, Senate, Congress, House, public option, Health Care for America Now (all tags)

DOJ will meet with gay rights groups about DOMA

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Greg Sargent reported today at The Plum Line,

Two prominent gay rights lawyers litigating high-profile cases against the Obama administration tell me that their requests to meet with administration lawyers to discuss the cases were rebuffed [...].

In both cases, the lawyers are representing Federal employees whose spouses are being denied protections or benefits under the Defense of Marriage Act.

Less than two hours after that post, Sargent received encouraging news from the DOJ and posted an update:

The Obama Justice Department has reached out to major gay rights organizations and scheduled a private meeting for next week with the groups, in an apparent effort to smooth over tensions in the wake of the controversy over the administration's defense in court of the Defense of Marriage Act. [...]

At the meeting -- which hasn't been announced and is expected to include leading gay rights groups like GLAD and Lambda Legal -- both sides are expected to hash out how to proceed with pending DOMA cases.

Though there's no guarantee either side will leave next week's meeting happy, it's encouraging to hear that some dialogue is planned.

Tags: LGBT, GLBT, Barack Obama, Department of Justice, Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, gay rights (all tags)

International Refugee Day

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

June 20th is International Refugee Day. A refugee is legally defined as a person who is outside his or her country of nationality and is unable to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution because of his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. By receiving refugee status, individuals are guaranteed protection of their basic human rights, and cannot be forced to return to a country where they fear persecution.

In 2007, there were 15.9 million refugees around the world, including 4.5 million Palestinian refugees, and it is estimated that 80 percent of refugees are women and children. According to the UNHCR, the leading countries of origin for refugees in 2007 were:

* Afghanistan: 3.1 million
* Iraq: 2.3 million
* Colombia: 552,000
* Sudan: 523,000
* Somalia: 457,000

Internally displaced people (IDPs) have been forced to leave their homes as a result of armed conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations, but unlike refugees they have not crossed an international border. Although internally displaced people outnumber refugees by more than two to one, no single UN or other international agency has responsibility for responding to internal displacement. As a result, the global response to the needs of IDPs is often ineffective.

In 2007, there were an estimated 26 million people displaced internally by conflict. The largest populations of internally displaced people are found in:

* Sudan: 4.4 million - 6 million
* Colombia: more than 3 million
* Iraq: 2.8 million
* DR Congo: 1.25 million
* Somalia: 1.1 million

This year the crisis in Pakistan added an approximate 2 million more IDPs. Another crisis that has been under-reported is the IDP crisis in Sri Lanka as that country's civil war wound down. The number of Tamil IDPs is estimated at 285,000 currently in resettlement camps. The displaced living in towns numbers perhaps another 500,000. These are largely silent crises because governments are often unwilling to admit that they have an IDP crisis even if one is self-evident.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), established in 1998 by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), is the leading international body monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide. Through its work, the Centre contributes to improving national and international capacities to protect and assist the millions of people around the globe who have been displaced within their own country as a result of conflicts or human rights violations.

At the request of the United Nations, the Geneva-based IDMC runs an online database providing comprehensive information and analysis on internal displacement in some 50 countries. Based on its monitoring and data collection activities, the Centre advocates for durable solutions to the plight of the internally displaced in line with international standards. The IDMC also carries out training activities to enhance the capacity of local actors to respond to the needs of internally displaced people (IDPs). In its work, the Centre cooperates with and provides support to local and national civil society initiatives. For more on the IDMC, please visit the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre website. Their May 2009 report, Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2008 is available for download.

My first job out of college was for UNHCR and the plight of refugees and IDPs remains one of the driving forces of my life. Today I remember my Sahrawi friends who now 34 years on remain living in Tindouf, Algeria exiled from their home in the Western Sahara. While 200,000 people may not seem like many, it is important to recall that over 90% of Sahrawis have been forced to flee from Moroccan oppression.

While the world focuses on the wall that Israel is building in the West Bank, no one condemns the wall that Morocco has built to keep the Sahrawis from ever returning to their homes. During the conflict that lasted from 1975 to 1991, Morocco constructed a 250 km defensive wall, known as the Berm. This earthwork fortification divides Western Sahara in two with Polisario National Liberation Front controlling the area east of the Berm and Morocco controlling the area to the west. The barrier landmine belt that runs alongside the berm is believed to be the longest continuous minefield in the world.

Tags: Refugees, Internally Displaced Persons, UNHCR, Sahwari (all tags)

The dangers of a fake public health insurance option updated

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Updated from yesterday's version. Note: if you support the public option, please sign the petition at StandWithDrDean.com, send an e-mail to your senators, and support Blue America's planned tv ad campaign.

The White House and key Democratic senators, including Iowa's Tom Harkin, appear to be walking into a trap for the sake of bipartisan agreement on health care in the Senate.

There is growing support for a fake "public option," as opposed to a government health insurance plan that would compete directly with private insurance companies.

If Congress passes this kind of deal and President Barack Obama signs it, we will get a enormously expensive non-solution to an enormous problem, and Democrats will pay the political price.

After the jump I'll explain why political hacks as well as policy wonks should refuse the latest efforts to derail the public option.

UPDATE: Check out the numbers from a brand-new New York Times/CBS nationwide poll: Asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government's offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private insurance plans?" 72 percent of respondents said "favor," including 87 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents, and 50 percent of Republicans.

Earlier this month, President Obama wrote this in a letter to key senators:

I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.

The public option is anathema to Republicans and corporate Democrats, because it would give consumers more choices. In most parts of the country, one or two companies dominate the health insurance market.

Also, a government-run plan would have lower overhead costs than private insurers, especially for-profit insurers that need to reward shareholders. Experts predict that tens of millions of Americans would choose the public option. Private insurance companies would have to change their business practices in order to compete.

With the president committed to a public option, the battle in Congress is now over what kind of program can be labeled a public option. When Dr. Howard Dean spoke at a health care forum in Des Moines on May 28, he warned about two leading "fake public option" proposals: the so-called "trigger" and something modeled on the health insurance benefit for federal employees, who can choose among a range of private health plans. Dean explained that the parameters for the "trigger" could easily be set so that the government-run plan would never be implemented. As for creating a new large pool for Americans to choose among private plans, he likened that to "throwing a trillion and a half dollars out the window," because government funds would be subsidizing purchases of private plans with nothing to bring down costs or create efficiencies.

Many members of Congress who are big recipients of campaign contributions from the insurance industry are now pushing a third fake public option: cooperatives. According to Thursday's Des Moines Register, this model has strong potential in the Senate:

[Senator Tom] Harkin said the cooperative alternative could be the compromise that brings a critical number of Democrats and Republicans together.

"We're looking at it to see how it would work," said Harkin, a top Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "There may be a few problems with it, but it just might work. I'm looking at it quite positively."

Besides [Democratic Senator Kent] Conrad, Finance Committee Democrats Charles Schumer of New York and Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, and Republican Susan Collins of Maine have said they are favorable to the idea.

Harkin, who has said he supports including a government insurance program, said he would need to know whether the size of cooperatives would be enough to drive down costs. Policies should also be portable as people move from one region to another, he said.

But Harkin remained open to supporting cooperatives.

"They are member-owned. They have to elect their own boards and can set parameters. They can't advertise, market or run up expenses," he said. "It might work. There are a lot of people crunching numbers."

I'm all for Congress allowing people to form health insurance cooperatives if some people believe in that model. If they work well, they will grow in popularity. However, cooperatives should compete alongside (not instead of) a real public option. Citizens need the option of buying into a nationwide plan like Medicare on day one, not years after discovering that the local cooperative is a raw deal.

Also, I can't see how a policy from a state-level member-owned cooperative could be portable for policy-holders who move across the country. And if cooperative boards can set their own rules, where does that leave Americans who are currently uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions?

If the president truly believes in a public option, he should make clear immediately that cooperatives cannot be a substitute for a government-run plan.

Unfortunately, the White House is sending the opposite signal, as in this interview Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave the Associated Press:

"I think there is a lot of understanding that the private market has really failed to provide affordable coverage to Americans," Sebelius said. The industry has had "a lot of opportunities" to get rid of coverage restrictions and other unpopular policies, Sebelius said, and really "hasn't served Americans very well."

However, Sebelius stressed that Obama is open to compromise on the shape of the public plan, which doesn't have to be run by the government. She spoke positively of a compromise idea that envisions consumer-owned nonprofit cooperatives, like rural electricity or agriculture co-ops. They would get started with seed money from taxpayers but then compete without government control. The plan by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., may end up in a health overhaul bill to be unveiled by the Senate Finance Committee this week.

Nor have I heard the White House smack down the "compromise" plan backed by former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and Bob Dole. Daschle was Obama's first choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Here he is alongside the leader of Republican efforts to kill President Clinton's health care reform, proposing a plan with no public option--just a "'federal fall back' if the insurance companies didn't or couldn't implement cost-cutting and efficiency measures on their own." (Yes, I saw that Daschle says he still supports a public option, but if that's the case, why was he holding hands with Dole on a compromise with a "trigger"?)

The White House and many Senate Democrats would rather have a bipartisan plan that could overcome a Republican filibuster than pass health care reform through the budget reconciliation process, which would require only 51 votes. David Broder reported earlier this month,

The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48.

As I understand it, using reconciliation would force Congress to revisit the issue in a few years, when the political climate might be less favorable for health care reform.

I see a lot more downside to weakening the plan in order to get Republican votes. On May 27, I spoke with Dean by telephone and asked him about efforts by Senator Ron Wyden and others to create a health care plan without a public option, with the goal of getting 70 to 80 votes in the Senate. Dean said "there's no great grace in getting 70 votes" for a bill that doesn't do anything. "All that's going to do is bankrupt the federal treasury."

If Washington Democrats lack the political will to support a public option for the right reasons (a Medicare-style plan would be more efficient, give consumers more choices and keep private insurers honest), maybe crass political calculations can bring them around to supporting a public option.

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that

There was also support for the Democratic push to let people sign up for a public health-care plan that would compete with private companies, one of the toughest issues in the health-care debate. Three in four people said a public plan is extremely or quite important.

The same poll found high levels of concern about the budget deficit.

Obama and Senate Democrats need to ask themselves how Americans will like health care "reform" that costs over $1 trillion and fails to provide an affordable and accessible alternative to private insurance.

Maybe they think Democrats won't get blamed for a costly failure to deal with a big problem. After all, Chris Bowers is right:

Bipartisanship has nothing to do with reducing the costs of health care or increasing access to health care. However, bipartisanship has a lot do with providing politicians political cover in the event that a piece of legislation fails to deliver on its ostensible purpose. [...]

The purpose of bipartisanship is so that, in the event that you pass legislation that is unpopular and / or does not end up working, then it is impossible to take all of the blame for it.

The Chuck Grassleys of the world know better. They understand that a $1 trillion failure to solve our health care crisis will "prove" that Republicans were right all along: Democrats are incompetent, and "big government" is the problem, not the solution.

Democrats control the legislative and executive branches, and if we get health care reform right, we could achieve political realignment in our favor. If we screw up this chance, voters will hold us accountable. No one will remember how many Senate Republicans voted for the bill.

Accepting a fake public option in the name of bipartisanship reminds me of some French guy's comment from 200 years ago: "It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake."

I'll be listening carefully when Obama goes on ABC this Wednesday to talk about health care reform. Will he insist on a real public option, as in the House Democrats' draft bill?

Tags: Congress, Senate, White House, barack obama, Kathleen Sebelius, Ron Wyden, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, howard dean, health care reform, public option, Tom Harkin (all tags)

Midwest California likely to receive highspeed rail funding

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Via the Environmental Law and Policy Center's blog I saw this piece from Business Week:

High-speed rail plans in the Midwest and California appear to be front runners in the race for $8 billion in stimulus cash based on federal criteria released Wednesday that favor projects with established revenue sources and multistate cooperation.

California voters last November approved nearly $10 billion in state bonds that could be combined with federal money to build 800 miles of high-speed track. Eight Midwest states have cooperated closely to promote a network, with Chicago as its hub, that would join 12 metropolitan areas within 400 miles.

Karen Rae, deputy administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, stopped short of naming favorites during an interview with The Associated Press in Chicago, but she praised Midwestern states for their cooperation and pointed to California's bond issue.
[...]

The FRA's 68 pages of often technical rules also seek projects that would reduce regional highway and airport congestion and create jobs, especially among lower income Americans. [...]

The Midwest project foresees upgrades of three existing routes: Chicago-St. Louis; Chicago-Madison, Wis., via Milwaukee; and Chicago-Pontiac, Mich., through Detroit. Later, they'd upgrade a St. Louis-Kansas City, Mo. route. The governors of the eight Midwest states -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin -- wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in April appealing for money for the region, one of the hardest hit by the recession.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has said it hopes to build 800 miles of track for high-speed trains and would ask for federal funds to work on lines between San Francisco and San Jose and Los Angeles and Anaheim.

These kinds of projects are among the best programs funded by the stimulus bill. Not only will they create construction jobs during the next few years, they will provide lasting benefits in terms of energy use, air pollution and quality of life. I would have liked to see rail projects receive even more stimulus money, but $8 billion is not chump change.

Expanding regular passenger rail is also worthwhile if it provides more alternatives to driving along busy corridors. I was excited to read a few days ago that a passenger rail line between Chicago and Iowa City could be running in two to three years. Apparently an Amtrak feasibility study for this route showed "very promising" results. Such a line would run through the Quad Cities and could eventually be extended to connect Des Moines and Omaha.

I highly recommend BruceMcF's post "How To Build a National High Speed Rail System" for anyone interested in this issue.

There was also good discussion of high-speed rail in a recent MyDD diary by atdleft. I agree with him on the need to connect Las Vegas with southern California population centers by rail, although I would rather see stimulus money fund wheels-on-track high-speed rail (as opposed to the much more expensive maglev approach).

Tags: transportation, high-speed rail, stimulus, economy (all tags)

DNC Outraises RNC in May

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

The Hotline's Jennifer Skalka has the details:

The DNC, which has lagged its Republican counterpart in fundraising so far this year, outraised the RNC in May by almost $3M.

The DNC took in $8.37M, compared with the RNC's $5.7M. The RNC has significantly more cash in the bank, however, $21.5M to the DNC's $12.1M.

With the Democrats already having consistently atched or even outraised the Republicans for the past four years despite not controlling the White House, there appears to be little reason why a Democratic National Committee, aided by a popular Democratic President, wouldn't be able to bring in more campaign cash than the Republican National Committee. So here's to hoping this is the beginning of a trend rather than an aberration.

Tags: DNC, RNC, Fundraising (all tags)

Irans disputed elections the aftermath

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Unrest over the disputed reelection of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues in the face of banned opposition rallies and a crackdown on the media and the internet. Follow live updates on the aftermath of the poll

10.00am:
The opposition has called off a planned rally that was due to take place at 4pm (12.30BST) after it was banned by the Interior Ministry.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran has been talking to opposition supporters.

He writes:

Shervin Elahverdi, 21, university student at Azad University in Tehran – protesting at Vanak Square, yesterday afternoon: "What we are witnessing is a coup d'etat from hardliners in Iran against the reformist movement and the people's will. For many years Iranian state-run TV has shown Israeli forces attacking innocent people in Palestine but these riot police are more brutal than them. They have put at least 50 reformists in prison since this morning; what does that mean other than the beginning of a coup in Iran? I have seen riot police swearing at innocent people in the streets and attacking them for no reason."

Morineh Tahmasebi, 57, housewife, Vali-e-Asr Street: "I lost one of my sons in the Iran-Iraq war, he was killed for defending his country and now my mouth is completely shut. [The election results are] not what my son and my family wanted - it doesn't have anything to do with Islam. These riot police are worse than any criminals in the world. Now I feel ashamed to say that there was a time when I defended the Islamic Republic. It's not what we wanted. It's worse than a dictatorship. I regret that I lost my son for this regime now."
Shirin Behzadi, 45, university professor, on Enghelab Square yesterday morning: "It's very surprising that the whole world is silent now. I don't understand why the international community just ignores what's happening right now in Tehran. Why don't they react and help hopeless Iranians? I'm quite confused why even the United States has not paid enough attention to the obvious vote fraud in Iran. I'm now thinking maybe the world's big powers like Ahmadinejad. We are losing our semi-democracy in Iran. We had a very poor democracy and now we are losing everything we had. Why doesn't the UN help Iranians? Everybody in the world is just concerned about the nuclear issue in Iran. Why is the world silent now when Iran is in turmoil and enduring a semi-coup?
Taher Bagheri, 26, worker in Tehran Bazaar, in front of Mirdamad Metro Station in Tehran: "Even if we assume that Mousavi and Karoubi are not under house arrest, how can they announce anything to the public while the government has blocked the internet, SMS, mobile phone connection, and arrested almost all the prominent reformists in Iran? If this mess in Tehran's streets spread to the whole country in the next couple of days, then Iran really would become a hell. We hope that something comes out of blue and helps us to get rid of this dictatorship."

The popular Iranian cartoonist, Nikahang Kosar, depicts Ahmadinejad as a bandit holding Iran to ransom. This is his take on the official result.

10.15am:
We are getting reports that the real result of the elections are being leaked by disgruntled Interior Ministry officials. They apparently show that the opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, had a clear majority and that Ahmadinejad may have won less than 30%. We will have a full report later.

Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, has expressed "serious doubts" about the official results.

Amnesty has called for an urgent inquiry into the violence used by the security forces to put down opposition protests over the weekend.

10.30am:
Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has declared that election rigging claims should be investigated.

"Naturally in this election, complaints should be followed through legal channels," Reuters quoted him as telling Mousavi in a meeting last night.

Khamenei also appealed for calm. "It is necessary you follow the issue calmly," he told Mousavi.

Photos from a Tehran university blogger show the aftermath of the police violence against protesters and opposition supporter's premises.

10.45am:
Ahmadinejad has delayed a planned visit to Russia.

"The president will definitely not come today," an Iranian embassy official in Moscow told Reuters.

11am:
There's a useful list of people Twittering in English from Iran, from Simon Columbus. But beware, there seem to be even more wild rumours flying round Twitter than usual. Writing on his personal blog, Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of the BBC's Global News, lists the unsubstantiated rumours that have been circulating.

But he concedes that Twitter and other sites are useful if treated with scepticism:

If you had a reasonable understanding of social media, how to set up and assess feeds, how to compare and contrast information, if you had a reasonable understanding of news flows, a developed sense of scepticism, and an above average understanding of the political situation in Iran, you would have emerged much better informed than the lay viewer relying on TV or Radio news.

11.15am:
Extraordinary video footage of the protests and their violent suppression are emerging on YouTube. My colleague Simon Jeffery has been trawling through them.

This is the best he picked out. It shows a huge crowd being charged by police on motorbikes (an injured police officer is later helped by protesters)

Other videos show: protests overnight; students from Isfahan showing off their wounds; police attacks; protesters fleeing the police; traffic protests; a huge opposition rally; and this round up shows five clips of more protests and violence.

12.15pm:
Riot police raided university dormitories in the capital last night, after thousands of students gathered to protest the election result.

There were reports of at least three deaths, writes Saeed Kamali Dehgan. A witness told him:

The protests at a university in Tehran were bigger than on Saturday night. Students gathered in front of the dormitory, and they were throwing stones at bricks at the riot police and basijis [militiamen] who had attacked them with teargas.
At 1.30am riot police opened fire with teargas. We could hear the shots every minute. Three protestors were hit - one in the leg, one in his eye, and one in his neck - and then six more were hit, but nobody was allowed to go and help them.
They were screaming and the student who was hit in the eye was in a terrible condition, but the police didn't let anyone help them. Then the police went into the dormitory complex.
They took over block number 23 and severely attacked the students there with plastic batons. The police set fire to the student's belongings and their beds. Then special guards from the army entered the dorms carrying rifles.

At least 300 special guards and riot police on motorbikes joined the ones in the dorms, and they were firing more teargas. I was in dorm number 22 when they broke down the doors and entered the building, firing at least 10 teargas rounds.
We had nowhere to hide but the toilets and bathrooms, and they shouted "You traitors to the Islamic republic, you bastards, leave the building or we'll shoot you all." Many students were severely wounded in the attack - we could hear injured students groaning and shouting for help.
At 3am the special guards and riot police said on loudspeakers: "If you evacuate the building we won't harm you. Otherwise you'll all be injured or killed."
Then all the students came out of the building in lines, with their hands on their heads. The police hit then with batons and some started to shout that they had conquered the dorms. Eventually they let us go back to our rooms, but at least ten had been shot, some appeared to have been killed, and hundreds were injured.

12.20pm:
Ahmadinejad came third, according to those unconfirmed leaked election results mentioned earlier.

12.30pm:
Some of Mousavi's supporter are planning to go ahead with today's opposition rally that was cancelled after it was banned. They will be carrying photos of Khomeini in an attempt to protect themselves, according to one Mousavi supporter. The rally is due to start about now.

12.45pm:
Supporters of Ahmadinejad on motorbikes and armed with sticks clashed with Mousavi supporters in Tehran, according to a Reuters witness.

1pm:
The Guardian has a new video of the post-election protests and violence.

1.0Opm:
The BBC accuses Iran of trying to block its Persian service.

The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Julian Borger, explains the doubts over the election results.

In his latest audio dispatch from Tehran, our middle east editor, Ian Black, says: "It feels as if the government is much better organised than the opposition".

1.40pm:
Tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters have gathered in Tehran in defiance of an Interior Ministry ban and the cancellation of the rally by Mousavi himself.

"The street is fully packed," a witness told Reuters. They are chanting: "Mousavi take back our votes."

Twitter user, Amin Abbaspour, says thousands have gathered at Tehran's Enghelab Square.

1.55pm:
Former minister, Mohammad Ali Abhati, describes the election as a "huge swindling". Michael Tomasky, editor in chief of Guardian America, says it right to describe Ahmadinejad's actions as a coup.

2.05pm:
Mousavi has been seen at today's rally along with other opposition politicians, according to al-Jazeera. It's the first time he's been seen in public since the election.

2.30pm:
CNN reports that hundreds of thousands of people have attended today's rally, including Mousavi.

The BBC says he told rally: "The vote of the people is more important than Mousavi or any other person."

2.45pm:
Robert Tait, the Guardian's former Tehran correspondent, has been poring over leaked reports of the official results, allegedly leaked by disaffected officials.

He and our diplomatic editor Julian Borger write: "The figures have been accompanied by claims from interior ministry sources that fake statistics were fed into a software program and then distributed to vote counts among polling stations to produce a plausible outcome. The same sources have also claimed that the interior ministry's statements announcing the results were prepared before Friday night's count."

Such claims are being reported on websites that Iran is frantically trying to block, according to our blogs editor, Kevin Anderson. He explains the cat-and-mouse game between the authorities and internet users.

3pm:
Footage of today's rally on al-Jazeera showed what looked like hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Tehran, many waving green banners.

Twitter user Abbaspour has published this picture of the rally.

The BBC's Persian service has carried the same pictures of the rally.

3.50pm:
Former president Mohammad Khatami told the rally that the election should be declared void, according to this update from Twitter user Mousavi1388.

Here's one of the latest pictures from the rally.

4.05pm:
The French government has summoned Iran's ambassador over concerns about the election.

The Iranian embassy in Paris said France this was "hasty, irresponsible and interventionist," according to AP.

5.00pm:
Twitter user Madyar has a picture of Mousavi at the rally.

5.25pm:
Iranian state television reports that shots have been fired during the mass rally, according to Reuters.
"There has been sporadic shooting out there ... I can see people running here," a reporter of Iran's English-language Press TV said.
"A number of people who are armed, I don't know exactly who they are, but they have started to fire on people causing havoc in Azadi Square," he said.

5.35pm:
The Associated Press is reporting that pro-government militia members have fired at opposition rally, killing at least one person

6.15pm:
The BBC's Persian service is carrying an eyewitness report saying that four protesters have been shot dead in Azadi Square.

6.40pm:
Reuters is reporting that gunfire has been heard in three districts of north Tehran. Repeated shots were heard in Velenjak, Jordan and Darous districts.

6.50pm:
That's all from me today. My colleague Daniel Nasaw is going to take over the live-blog from here. Thanks for reading.

7.07pm:
Thanks. Daniel Nasaw in Washington here. Former US national security council Iran specialists Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann make the contrarian case that Ahmadinejad's reelection was legit.

7.34pm:
Time Magazine White House reporter Michael Scherer tweets:

"Expect Obama to comment on Iran at 5 pm today, when he takes questions with Italian PM Berlusconi."

7.54pm:
A news flash from Reuters has just come over the wire:

IRAN'S MOUSAVI SAYS NOT VERY OPTIMISTIC ON ELECTION APPEAL

8.13pm:
Tehran-based Guardian contributor Saeed Dehghan sends along this picture of the protester shot dead by Iranian security forces today.

9.54pm:
More photos from protests in Tehran today. The headline reads: "New, heartwrenching photos of the attack and the savagery on people and students in the Tehran University quarter".

10.51pm:
Associated Press wonders
"How do you count almost 40 million handwritten paper ballots in a matter of hours and declare a winner? That's a key question in Iran's disputed presidential election."

International polling experts and Iran analysts said the speed of the vote count, coupled with a lack of detailed election data normally released by officials, was fueling suspicion around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory.

8.45am:
Mousavi has written to the Iranian people encouraging them to carry on protesting, according to al-Jazeera.

"My repeated suggestion as your servant is that you continue your civil and legal opposition all around the country, in a calm manner and observing anti-conflict fundaments," its translation of the letter says.

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Aung San Suu Kyi trial delayed but there is no doubt about the outcome

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Latest post in a series by the British ambassador in Burma, Mark Canning, one of the few outsiders who has been allowed into the courtroom during the trial of the opposition leader
Read more of his accounts in full here

The resumption of Aung San Suu Kyi's trial has been postponed until 26 June. Her defence team continues its effort to admit witnesses who were earlier excluded. Her lawyers scored a minor success last week when a higher court allowed one to testify, but are now taking the issue to the supreme court.

This delay suits the government fine. It conveys an impression that the wheels of justice are turning and that there is some doubt about the final outcome. Of course there isn't. Daw Suu* will be found guilty – the only question is the length of the sentence and where she will serve it.

The number of political prisoners has increased by more than 1,000 over the past 16 months. There is no precedent for the acquittal of those accused of serious "political crimes" and certainly not someone of her stature. Comedians, doctors, bloggers, journalists, housewives and aid workers have been packed off to Burma's jails and work camps. They are generally sentenced at short, closed hearings. The unusual thing about this trial is that the status of the defendant obliges a spurious impression of openness.

Daw Suu told her lawyers this week that she wouldn't have gone into politics in the first place if she was afraid of the consequences. And consequences there have been – just a few fleeting moments of freedom in the more than 19 years she has fought for a better future for this sad country. Her 64th birthday on Friday marks another sad milestone.

The military government has found time to launch another military offensive in eastern Karen state, which is forcing thousands of civilians to flee across the border to Thailand. This is an effort to finish off the Karen fighters, who for 60 years have struggled to gain a measure of independence for their people. But there are suspicions that Burma's unhappiness at Thai criticism of the trial might also have played a role in the timing. The government berated Thailand last week for its "unneighbourly" behaviour and contrasted their attitude with that of China, which had never sought to involve itself in Burma's affairs.

* Daw Suu is a short form used in Burma for Aung San Suu Kyi

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Irans postelection unrest live

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Grim details are emerging of the violent crackdown of opposition rallies as the powerful guardian council agrees a limited recount in the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Follow live updates on the aftermath of the disputed poll

7.30am:
Iran's state radio reports that seven people were killed yesterday at a massive demonstration by supporters of the opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

7.45am:
Mobile phone footage that appears to show a man injured in yesterday's shooting has been posted to YouTube.

This poor quality video shows an injured man being carried away on the back of a taxi.

There are claims that up to 1.5 million people attended the rally. This video gives an idea of the scale of demonstration on both sides of a bridge.

8.00am:
The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Julian Borger, comments on the inquiry into the election called by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The inquiry is aimed at calming the unrest but it could backfire by encouraging the protesters, Borger tells Guardian Daily (after 9.10 minutes)

A new Guardian video also shows yesterday's the demonstration in Tehran.

8.10am:
Ahmadinejad has arrived Yekaterinburg, Russia to a summit, according to the Iranian Students News Agency. He was due to travel yesterday but delayed his trip because of the unrest.

There are more protests planned today in Tehran at 5pm (1.30BST).

8.20am:
The popular and prolific Iranian cartoonist, Nikahang Kosar, sums up the choice facing Ahmadinejad. Another appears to show Khamenei as a puppet of the finger waging president.

8.40am:
Anyone with a camera or laptop is being attacked on the streets, according to persiankiwi, on Twitter.

8.50am:
Mousavi has written to the people of Iran urging them to carry on their protests, according to al-Jazeera.

He also appeals to the police avoid violence and urges people to find a way around the crackdown on the internet and mobile phone communications.

It says: "Sadly, an extensive effort has is being used to to cut off our means of communication with each other, and it is not noticed that that the blocking of these lines would change the nature of the organised and goal-driven reactions to, God-forbidding, change into blind actions.

I am certain that your creativity would result in new and effective ways of communication so that we could use our actions in a beneficial way for the country and the revolution."

9am:
Judah Grunstein, editor of World Politics Review and Henry Farrell, assistant professor of international affairs at George Washington University, discuss how the uprising is being covered by the media and the future of the Ahmadinejad regime, on Blogging Heads TV.

9.05am:
Big news: the guardian council has agreed to conduct a recount in disputed areas, according to Robert Tait, the Guardian's former Tehran correspondent.

State TV has confirmed the recount, according to Reuters.

The state broadcaster is also reporting that the "main agents" behind the unrest have been arrested with "explosives and guns."

The supreme leader, Khamenei, will lead Friday's prayers, according to al-Jazeera.

9.25am:
Prominent Iranian reformists have been arrested, reports Robert Tait, our former Tehran correspondent.

In addition to the earthquake just announced about the guardian council being ready to recount disputed votes, reports from Tehran suggest that Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a cleric and and adviser to Mehdi Karroubi, one of the defeated candidates, has been arrested.
Abtahbi is a big fish and a prominent character. He was an adviser to Mohammad Khatami's reformist government. It appears to be a clear attempt to intimidate the presidential election candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Saeed Hajarian, a former adviser to Khatami and supporter of Mousavi has also been detained, according to the wife of Mohammad Ali Abtahi.
Hajarian was left badly disabled and with his speech impaired after a failed assassination attempt in Tehran in 2000, while he was a Tehran city councillor. This is beginning to bear the hallmarks of a mass round up.

9.40am:
More extraordinary footage of the protests and the police crackdown have emerged on YouTube. This shows stone throwing protesters being charged by police on motorbikes in Shiraz.

9.45am:
The opposition wants more than a recount in the disputed areas, according to Reuters.

An senior ally of defeated candidates Mousavi and Karroubi said they wanted a rerun rather than a recount of "a few ballot boxes".

A guardian council spokesman said it was "ready to recount the disputed ballot boxes claimed by some candidates, in the presence of their representatives."

"It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount," spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

9.50am:
Twitter has delayed an vital upgrade because of the role the network is playing in the Iran uprising.

It was due last night but as Twitter explained: "Our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight's planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3pm PST (1:30am in Iran)."

9.55am:
The guardian council has ruled out annulling the election, according its spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaee, according to Robert Tait, who is monitoring Iran's state radio and TV.

Many reformist believe that the level of tampering has been so extreme that re-counting votes would be futile. But Kadkhodaee said annulment was "not an option", Tait reports.

10.02am:
120 academics have resigned in protest at police raids on Tehran University, according to the BBC World Service.

Robert Tait adds:

According to Mehr news agency, Mohammad Hadi Sadeghi, the chancellor of Shiraz university, has resigned apparently in protest against violence committed by security forces against students protesting the election result.
Clashes took place in the engineering faculty's library and were followed by the arrests of "hundreds" of students. At least one person in Shiraz has been confirmed dead, although other sources have suggested a higher figure.

10.10am:
More pictures have been posted to Twitpic of injured protesters. They include a man bleeding from the stomach; police raids on traffic; a man laid out on a make-shift stretcher; and most disturbingly a man who died in the protest together with tributes to him.

10.30am:
Video footage of the latest protests and violence is flooding into YouTube. This shows more of the demonstrations in Shiraz; and this shows a wounded female protest being taken away in an ambulance.

10.50am:

There is a planned march to the headquarters of the state broadcaster IRIB today, writes Robert Tait.

Protesters have apparently told each other to wear black shirts in mourning because IRIB's broadcasts have given the demonstrators little coverage and described them as "thugs".
It it will be interesting to see if it is allowed to proceed. People are being asked on Facebook to meet at Valiasr Square at 5pm(1.30BST).
But a pro-government counter demo, organised by the Islamic Propaganda Organisation, has also been called for today at 4pm (12.30BST) in the city's Valiasr Square. It has all the ominous makings of violent street clash.
Some of the protesters' chants are aimed not at Ahmadinejad but at Khamenei, the supreme leader.
The best known chant is "Death to the dictator" (Marg bar diktator). But there is another that goes "Seiyed Ali Pinochet, Iran Chile Nemishe - Seiyed Ali (Khamenei) Pinochet" - Iran will not become Chile. Somebody left a message on Balatarin, a Farsi blog site, last night suggesting that it was time to drop Marg bar Diktator and replace it with Marg Bar Khamenei.
On whether Ahmadinejad really did win, it has been pointed out that he won big in the home towns and provinces of his opponents. This is unheard of in Iran and is one of the strongest pointers to fraud.
Karroubi in particular, even though he was not expected to win, is very popular in Iran. He was awarded only 330,000 votes and was beaten 10 to one by Ahmadinejad in his home town. That is not credible.
As for the pre-election telephone polls showing that Ahmadinejad was winning two to one, there were similar ones closer to the election showing the same voting margin in favour of Mousavi.
Meanwhile, according to the Guardian's sources, students at Tehran university are in mourning for five fellow students said to have been killed in campus clashes with the security forces on Sunday.
According to witnesses, many are in tears and are threatening to stage a sit-in at the university on Friday to prevent the regular Friday prayer session - scheduled to be addressed by the supreme leader, Khamenei.

11.10am:
The are conflicting reports on whether Mousavi is urging people to turn out for today's rally. Some say he has urged supporters to stay away because it is too dangerous, others say this is misinformation. It's tricky to know what's true. The same thing happened yesterday when Mousavi addressed the rally despite reports that he had called it off.

Another gruesome picture has been published of one of the victims of yesterday's violence [warning disturbing content].

11.20am:
Today's rally has been called off "to protect lives", a Mousavi spokesman told Reuters. Justin in Tehran is sceptical.

Robert Tait adds: "Balatarin, a Farsi-language website, has just posted an urgent saying that a mass demonstration in favour of Mir Hossein Mousavi has been cancelled, on order of the candidate himself.

Mousavi's office is said to be preparing an emergency statement calling it off fearing violence after hearing that the government has organised 5,000 armed and trained plain-clothes forces to confront marchers.

The protest was to have taken place at 5pm Tehran time (1.30BST), with plans to march to the headquarters of IRIB, the state broadcasting organisaton.

11.30am:
There were demonstrations on the Tehran Metro yesterday, according to this short video clip.

Ahmadinejad is depicted squirming on a table trying to escape a computer mouse on this witty bit of Photoshopping.

11.45am:
My colleague Kevin Anderson has spotted some interesting photo and video sharers: Faramarz on Flickr and Amir on Friendfeed.

12.05pm:
There are reports that protesters are gathering at Valisar Square despite warnings about the presence of armed police.

Robert Tait writes: The following chilling message on Twitter may explain why Mousavi has decided to call off today's demo in central Tehran: "They are evacuating all buildings around Valiasr Sq & filling it with Basij (militia volunteers), please be careful!," it reads.

A member of Mousavi's election headquarters is quoted in Facebook as saying the government and police are trying to set a "death-trap" at the protest.

12.15pm:
Foreign journalists have been banned from leaving their offices to cover protests.

The Culture Ministry said journalists could continue to work from their offices but that it was cancelling press accreditation for all foreign media.

"No journalist has permission to report or film or take pictures in the city," a Culture Ministry official told Reuters.

One of those journalist, Channel 4's Lindsey Hilsum, says yesterday was a day in journalism that she will never forget.

12.25pm:
A new video shows what is claimed to be a policeman firing repeatedly at protesters from the window of a building. At one point the protesters appear to throw a petrol bomb at the building.

There's another video showing shooting here, and this is particularly grim footage of one of the victims [warning disturbing content].

12.30pm:
There are reports that a seven-point manifesto is being circulated calling for the supreme leader Khamenei to be replaced.

12.50pm:
Iran's parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, has told the west to mind its own business, according to the state's Iranian students news agency.

"There is no need for Americans to worry about Iran and its elections," he told parliament.

1pm:
One of the Twitter user the Guardian has cited has deleted their account and appealed to the media not to use Twitter names because, they say, doing so could put people's lives in danger.

A similar point is made by blogger Esko Reinikainen in his guide to cyberwar.

He writes:

Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discreetly through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces.

We'll try to be more careful.

Reinikainen also urges Twitter users not to publish internet provider proxies on Twitter, as many have done, including Stephen Fry, because they will be blocked by the authorities. He suggests direct messaging two Iranian Twitter users instead, who he says will discreetly circulate them. But of course, he had to identify the Twitter users to do this – thus breaking one of his rules about cyberwar – it's a tricky business. Ominously, one of the accounts identified no longer exists.

Others have turned to Audioboo to publicise proxies.

1.15pm:
My colleague Simon Rogers has been crunching the numbers on the official election results, and invites others to do the same on the Guardian's data blog.

1.30pm:
More harrowing footage of police violence has been published to YouTube, including images of people being beaten with batons.

2.20pm:
State TV is showing picture of a huge pro-government rally in Tehran.

Mousavi has urged his supporters not to protest until after the recount agreed by the guardian council, according to al-Jazeera.

Here Jon Stewart's wry take on the elections on the Daily Show.

2.25pm:
Despite the cancellation of the opposition rally around 10,000 people have gathered Valiasr Square, outside the office of the state broadcaster, according to the Guardian's Tehran correspondent.

He expects more to join the rally later.

Earlier Saeed attended the pro-Ahmadinejad rally. He reckoned about 20,000 people were there.

2.55pm:
Mousavi's supporters are wearing black to mourn those killed yesterday, according to CBS Radio.

3pm:
Tens of thousands of people have now gathered outside the IRIB, the headquarters of the state broadcasters, according to our man in Tehran who just phoned in from the rally.

He contrasts the police's handling of the opposition protest with the pro-government march on nearby North Valiasr Streets. Ahmadinejad's supporters have been ushered along peacefully, whereas Mousavi's supporters have faced hostility from the police and assertions that the protest is illegal.

There are reports of 2,000 police or Basij at the opposition rally.

3.30pm:
Thousands of pro-government demonstrators have gathered in Tehran in a show of support for the authorities' cracked down on independent media and opposition protesters, al-Jazeera reports.

State TV is claiming there were tens of thousands there.

3.40pm:
Loud shouts of "down with the dictator" are being heard in Tehran.

The BBC's Tehran reporter, Jon Leyne, reckons the Iranian authorities are genuinely flummoxed over what to do.

I really get the impression that the authorities are swinging back and forth between different policies. There is definitely indecision in the leadership, maybe even a power struggle there.
Because, frankly, they are simply witnessing the completely unexpected - nobody expected to see possibly millions of people out on Monday, in defiance of all the threats.
The government is so used to putting threats out and frightening people away from demonstrating. And suddenly this defiance has completely wrong-footed them. And it scared them, because this is exactly the way they came to power in 1979.

4.15pm:
My colleague, Cath Brazier, has put together this video of various disturbing images and footages to have emerged today via social networking sites.

4.20pm:
George Friedman, from the thinktank Stratfor Global Intelligence, reckons Ahmadinejad won the election and that's only wishful thinking from the west that he didn't.

"That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn't win," he writes in a provocative piece.

That's it from me, my Washington-based college Daniel Nasaw, will be taking over. Thanks for your comments today.

4.29pm:
Thanks Matt. Daniel Nasaw in Washington here. I note that for at least the second day in a row, the websites of the official Iranian Republic News Agency and the semi-official Fars News Agency are down, at least in Washington and London. One caveat: They could be overrun with traffic.

4.38pm:
From Tehran, a Twitterer tweets that phone lines in and out of the capital city are jammed and going in and out of service. She tweets that electricity is out in certain parts of the city and is wholly out in Tajrish, where her family is located.

5.10pm:
President Barack Obama just reiterated his comments from yesterday. At the White House after a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, Obama said he does not want to be seen as meddling in domestic Iranian affairs but said he shares the Iranian people's "deep concerns" about the election. He said he took Khamenei's pledge to investigate allegations of voter fraud as evidence the Supreme Leader is sensitive to the Iranian people's protests.

I will repeat and what I said yesterday. When I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being surpresd... it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people. My hope is that the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices, to express their aspirations. I do believe that something has happened in Iran, where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international commuity that have taken place in the past.

He said the Iranian people clearly want greater political freedom, but "how it plays out: Something for the Iranian people to decide."

۵.40pm:
Grand ‌Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, a top dissident cleric who was Ayatollah Khomeini's designated successor before falling out of favour with the regime, has issued a statement denouncing election results that "no one in their right mind can believe" and blasting the "astonishing violence" wrought on the protesters in full view of the press.

Key point: "A government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy".

The statement, in Farsi, was posted on Montazeri's official website. A rough English translation is here.

6.06pm:
The National Iranian-American Council in Washington has posted a handy English-language guide to the various security forces photographed beating pro-Mousavi forces.

6.18pm:
On his Facebook page, Mir Hossein Mousavi's team reports the demonstration is peaceful so far.

6.34pm:
The Mousavi campaign's twitter feed tweets:

"Mousavi has jst anouncd his readines togo on live state TV to tell everyone his views of the election & what happened after it"

6.39pm:
Reuters reports pro-Mousavi protesters are marching on the state television building. Witnesses tell the news agency that the building is ringed with riot police, though the protest was so far peaceful.

Meanwhile, Reuters is also reporting the US state department presuaded Twitter to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut service to Iranians.

6.44pm:

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, our correspondent in Tehran, reports that all of Tehran is shouting "Allah-o-Akbar" from rooftops. He reports that Mohammad Reza Shajarian, a popular Iranian singer, has joind the protesters in streets holding green banners.

Mohajerani, a former Iranian cultural minster now based in london, has asked people to go to friday pray this week and shout pro-mousavi slogans.

Three motorbikes set on fire in Vanak Square right now.

6.53pm:
Mousavi's camp says it has hard evidence of vote fraud.

In a note from Mousavi's news agency "Ghalam News", the campaign writes that Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, head of Mousavi and Karoubi's election-monitoring comittee, said that in at least 70 polling centers, the vote totals are greater than the number of people eligible to vote in the precinct.

Thanks Saeed for the translation.

7.06pm:
Several twitterers say plainclothes policement are going door-to-door to seize satellite dishes.

7.09pm:
An illustration of the perils of Twitter and other Internet outlets: A Youtube video clip is going around that purports to show black-suited police beating up a Mousavi supporter recently. The problem is, as a Guardian reader pointed out to me, the footage is at least two years old. Watch the same scene, posted on Youtube in 2007 here.

I can't quite tell if the two clips are identical but edited differently, but it is clear they were shot simultaneously, perhaps by two cameras. Keep your eyes on the white four-door car in the background. Also, about 1:30 into both clips, the camera affords a good angle on the unfortunate victim's backside.

7.17pm:
A Tweeter reports hearing shots in Tehran.

7.30pm:
Mousavi's purported twitter feed warns supporters to stay away from www.mirhoseyn.ir and www.mirhoseyn.com, which it says are fake.

UPDATE: The two sites ask "dear friends" to enter their first and last names, mobile phone number and email address in order to receive news updates. If the Mousavi camp tweet is correct, this could be an effort to gather a list of Mousavi supporters.

7.57pm:
There's a growing call on Twitter and Facebook for a coordinated cyberattack on the regime's official websites, http://www.khamenei.it, http://www.iribnews.ir/, and others.

8.04pm:
According to AP, Iranian television is reporting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is meeting with envoys for the four candidates and will call for unity.

8.10pm:
Our team in Tehran, London and elsewhere has a new piece:

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tonight dismissed post-election protests as the work of "tension seekers" and called for calm on national television.
As thousands of rival demonstrators filed through the streets of Tehran, promising further violence in days of unrest that have already killed seven people, the ayatollah called for "tolerance", adding: "Everybody should be patient.

8.20pm:
A Twitterer criticises me (and calls me an idiot) for using Twitter names in my posts. I did read Matt Weaver's post. But from my thinking, Iranian security forces can just as easily search twitter as I can for reports coming out of Tehran. Nevertheless, I've gone back and taken out Twitter names.

8.29pm:
Readers: Please keep in mind that Twitter is not reliable and that the Guardian is for the most part unable to verify the authenticity of these feeds. We are doing our best to maintain our standard, stringent journalistic practices, but since the Iranian government has banned foreign journalists from covering the protests, it is difficult.

8.47pm:
Roozonline, a Farsi news and commentary site that sometimes posts pieces in English, has a rather gory article about attacks on the dormitories at the University of Tehran.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Guardian Daily podcast Power struggle in Tehran plus Digital Britain

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

In Iran, protests have continued despite Monday's bloodshed. Middle East editor Ian Black, who's just returned from Tehran, outlines some possible outcomes of the power struggle in Iran over last week's presidential election result.

MediaGuardian's Jane Martinson looks at the government's communications strategy, unveiled yesterday in a white paper. It included plans to roll out super-fast broadband access across the UK, funded in part by a 50p-a-month levy on landlines.

A report by 30 scientists into the impact on the US of climate change is published today. US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg says it's an important part of President Barack Obama's strategy of persuading the American people to back his legislation to curb global warming.

A high court judge has ruled that a policeman who wrote an award-winning blog charting the day-to-day life of a police officer has no right to keep his identity secret. Legal affairs editor Afua Hirsch considers the implications of the ruling.

Simon Lewis was named yesteday as Gordon Brown's new spokesman. Chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt looks at his history in business and at Buckingham Palace, and explains how Lewis might fit in to Brown's team at No 10.

Iran protests live 17 June 2009

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

As the Iranian authorities continue their crackdown on opposition rallies, foreign journalists, and the internet, what next for the protest movement? Follow live updates on the aftermath of Iran's disputed presidential election

7.45am:
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has condemned the protests as "vandalism", according to state TV.

But he also endorsed the guardian council's decision to conduct a partial recount of Friday's ballot.

"Those in charge of supervising the elections are always trustworthy people, but this should not prevent an investigation into possible problems and clarifying the truth," Khamenei is quoted as saying.

7.50am:
We reported yesterday that Twitter had delayed an upgrade to its network because of the vital role it is playing in the Iran protest. It has now emerged that the US state department requested the delay, according to the Washington Post. This despite Barack Obama's stance of not meddling in Iranian affairs.

8am:
On the subject of Twitter, we face a tricky dilemma.

We have been contacted by a number of people urging us not to link to individual Twitter users in Iran. They claim that this puts people in real danger, although Twitter users in Iran have not repeated this concern.

On the other hand Twitter users are providing vital updates on the situation at a time when foreign journalists are facing severe restrictions. Linking to tweets (which are of course published on the internet) helps readers to asses the veracity of what is being reported. If we don't link won't this simply help silence opposition and citizen journalism in Iran?

It's a difficult issue.

8.20am:
More disturbing video footage of the clampdown on protesters has been posted to YouTube (and talked about on Twitter). As is so often the case it is impossible to know when this was filmed, but I haven't seen it before.

8.45am:
More Iran cartoons: this one shows Ahmadinejad erasing the "public" from the Islamic Republic of Iran; this show a military boot crushing a voter; and here's Steve Bell's take on Ahmadinejad's problem with counting.

8.50am:
Twitter linking update: My bosses (our own Guardian Council) have decided that it is best to err on the side of caution and not to link to Twitter updates from Iran for now.

8.55am:
Another opposition protest is being planned for today, according to the BBC and Reuters.

Reuters copy is now accompanied by this warning: "Reuters coverage is now subject to an Iranian ban on foreign media leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran."

The Guardian's Tehran correspondent, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, writing in Index of Censorship, describes the struggle in getting information out of Iran.

"I will continue to report, but I fear that I may be arrested," he writes.

9.10am:
Ominously the blog of the reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi is no longer available. In his last post he described the election as a "swindling". Abtahi, who was a senior adviser to the former president, Mohammad Khatami, was arrested yesterday.

9.15am:
Our Middle East editor, Ian Black, says the opposition movement is "amorphous and leaderless" in contrast to the power of the state. He says the outcome of the current power struggle could hinge on a partial recount of the election ordered by the guardian council. "How many people are going to believe the outcome?" he asks.

9.40am:
A man from Tehran, tells Small World News that most people are worried about their safety and fears more trouble at today's demonstration. In a three minute call he also says that internet bandwidth has been reduced and websites have been closed or hacked.

9.45am:
The English language version of Iran's state media, Press TV, reports that Mousavi supporters have called for another rally in Tehran this afternoon.

It notes the previous crackdown on similar rallies. "Tehran's governor general Morteza Tamaddon is quoted as saying: "Seven people were killed and 29 injured during the illegal rally on Monday."

The report adds: "While Mousavi backs the right of his supporters to express their dissatisfaction with peaceful protests, the candidate, who suffered a crushing defeat, has asked his supporters to keep calm and vigilant and to not fall into 'traps'."

9.55am:
Iran's foreign ministry has summoned European ambassadors to criticise their "interventionist and impudent" stances on the disputed election, according to the state news agency ISNA.

10am:
The Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on communications by blocking access to Yahoo, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan from Tehran.

Yahoo Messenger had played an important role since Friday, when the Iranian government began to block Iran's mobile phone network and satellite TV channels, including the BBC's Persian Service.
"Yahoo Messenger was one of the most important means that Iranians could still distribute information after the government filtered Facebook and Twitter‚" said Mahmoud Mirhashemi, 24, an engineering graduate from the Iran University of Science and Technology.
"In the early morning I couldn't log into my Yahoo Messenger account. First I thought that's because of the government clampdowns on the internet but then I found that I have access to other websites but not my Messenger," he said.
"The internet has a very important social function in Iran in comparison to Europe and other countries. We are one of the top 10 world's active blogging communities because of the level of censorship inside the country and now the government is cracking down on the internet as well," he said.
An Iranian blogger, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "Iran's blogging community has been very quiet this week - mostly because they are afraid of being arrested. The government has already filtered thousands of websites and blogs since Friday's election."
Iran has already blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and at least 20 websites affiliated to Iran's defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi, although some users still can update their profiles by using proxy sites.
"Before this we could bypass filtering by using proxy websites, the links for which were distributed daily among friends by email. But now the Iranian communication ministry has also begun to tackle proxy websites too‚" said Majid Farahani, a 21-year-old student.
"But there is still a small number of people who update their Facebook and Twitter profiles by using special anti-filtering programmes installed on their PC rather than regular proxy websites. The problem is that many people don't know how to use this software‚" he said.

10.05am:
The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force answering to Supreme Leader, warned bloggers to remove any materials that "create tension" or face legal action, AP reports.

Meanwhile, the US-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran says there has been mass arrests of leading reformists including politicians, intellectuals, activists and journalists.

It is getting reports that in the city of Tabriz more than 100 prominent figures have been arrested.

10.21am:
There are reports that Saeed Laylaz, a political analyst often quoted in the Guardian, has been arrested at his home.

The Guardian's former Tehran correspondent Robert Tait says as many as 500 may have been arrested since the election. The figure appeared on the website of Radio Zamaaneh, a Farsi-language station, and was attributed to Aaron Rhodes, the spokesman for the campaign, who they interviewed.

10.30am:
Mousavi supporters on Twitter are urging people to attend a rally at 5pm (1.30BST) in Tehran's Tir Square. A message calling for a "silent sea of green" at the square is being repeatedly retweeted.

10.50am:
A picture of what is claimed to be a huge opposition rally in Isfahan is being widely circulated on Twitter. There is also an extremely disturbing footage showing the death of a student in Isfahan [warning distressing content] on YouTube.

10.55am:
Mir Hossein Mousavi's website, Kalemeh, has carried a statement from him urging relatives of protesters killed or injured in street clashes to go to attend a peaceful demonstraton tomorrow, which he will lead, writes Robert Tait.

The venue of the planned demonstration has not been disclosed. But street demonstrations held to mourn the dead were one of the motors that gave momentum to the 1979 revolutionary movement.

11am:
The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry - the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third - was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.

Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in Tehran.
Asgari had reportedly leaked results that showed the elections were rigged by government use of new software to alter the votes from the provinces.
Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19 million votes, and should therefore be president.

We will try to get more details later.

11.20am:
A key Iranian figure, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has remained invisible since the election, has called an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts, according to the US-based Iran expert Reza Aslan.

"If true, this is a bombshell," says Nico Pitney on his excellent live blog of the crisis on the Huffington Post.

12pm:
In another sign of the internet crackdown YouTube has announced that it is only getting a tenth of the traffic it usually gets in Iran despite being deluged with videos from the country.

It also denies censoring the videos.

"Given the critical role these videos are playing in reporting this story to the world, we are doing our best to leave as many of them up as we can. YouTube is, at its core, a global forum for free expression," it says.

12.05pm:
The speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, has ordered an investigation into "unfortunate incidents" at Tehran University when a dormitory was raided by the police, according to Press TV.

There is video of the damage caused here.

12.15pm:
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran claims the following people have been arrested: Saeed Hajjarian, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Behzad Nabavi, Abdolfattah Soltani, Alireza Tajik, Kayvan Samimi, Shiva Nazarahari, Mahsa Amrabadi, Abdolah Ramezanzadeh, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Bagher Oskouiee Amir Mardani, Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mohammad Atrianfar, Mohammad Tavasoli, Taghi Rahmani, Reza Alijani, Hoda Saberi, Ahmad Afjeiee, Emad Bahavar, Mojtaba Khandan, Saieed Zeraatkar, Rouholah Shafiee, Ali Mehrdad, Mohammad Reza Ahmadinia, Ali Pour Khayeri, Shahin Nourbakhsh, Ali Taghipour Mohammad Shokuhi, Ashkan Mojaleli, Maysam Varahchehre, Mahdieh Minavi, Farhad Nasrollahpour, Ahmad Zaydabadi, General Secretary, Hadi Kahal, Hamed Iranshahi, Jalil Sharabianlu, Ghafar Farzadi, Majd Jabari, Rahim Yawai, Abbas Pourazhari, Lay Farzadi, Shabeti, Shamlu, Dr Ghafarzadeh, Dr. Soltaniazad, Dr. Panahi, Dr. Seyflou, Dr. Dadizadeh, Mehdi Yarbahrami, Mansour Ghafari, Hojatollah Amiri, Amir Hossein Jahani, Rohdah Rahimipour, and Mehdi Khodadadi.

Activisits that have disappeared include Payam Haydar Ghazvini, Nasim Riahi, Mojtaba Rajabi, and Atar Rashidi.

This photograph, by our Tehran correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan, lists the names of 75 students who were arrested. The name in red is a protester who was killed by the riot police.

If you have more information on the arrests please report it in the comments section below.

12.30pm:
Was the pro-Ahmadinejad rally Photoshopped to make it look larger?

12.45pm:
Several players in Iran's national football team took the field wearing green armbands - signifying support for Mousavi, who adopted green as his campaign colour - for the World Cup qualifier against South Korea today, writes Robert Tait.

Reports vary. Some say four team members are wearing the band - but others suggest it is the whole team. There appears to be photographic evidence here. There's another here.

1.30pm:
Iranians fans gathering for the football match in Seoul unfurled a banner that read "Go To Hell Dictator" and chanted "Compatriots, we will be with you to the end with the same heart," according to AP.

2pm:
My colleague Mark Tran has been going through various comment pieces of the Iran crisis.

He picks out this by Joe Cirincione, a nuclear weapsons expert, who admits to changing his mind about the country, "this is no longer Khamanei's Iran", he says.

And this by Robert Dreyfuss in the Nation which says: "The people who wanted change aren't going to get it. The regime is too powerful, and it controls all the levers of power: the army, the police, the Revolutionary Guard and paramilitary groups, thuggish militias, the judiciary and courts, the media, and more. Those who hope that the reformists, including Mousavi, former President Khatami, and cleric Mehdi Karroubi, will support a revolt that makes use of the mass movement against Ahmadinejad will find their hopes dashed."

2.15pm:
Football update from Robert Tait: The green armband wearing members of Iran's national team appear to have been forced to remove their pro-Mousavi emblems. The team emerged for the second half of the match against South Korea with none of its members wearing the symbols.

The match ended in a 1-1 draw, putting Iran's qualification for the World Cup in doubt.

2.30pm:
The planned opposition rally in Tehran is under way. "Stay in big groups," advises one tweet from the city.

Twitter users all over the world are being urged to change the location in their profiles to Tehran, in an attempt to frustrate the Iranian authorities. "It's much harder if we're all 'Iranians'," tweets Peter Havens.

2.45pm:
Abtahi's website is back up and running. It reads: "Mohammad Ali Abtahi, former vice president during Mr Khatami's presidency and the advisor to Mr Karroubi in the presidential election had been arrested today (Tuesday). Whenever he gets released, he will write here on his website."

3.15pm:
A picture claimed to be of today's opposition rally has been posted to Twitpic. It shows thousands of people marching on a flyover labelled the "Krimkhan bridge". The date of the picture is impossible to confirm, please let us know if you have more information.

3.30pm:
More than 500,000 Iranians are silently marching from from Haft-e-Tir Square to Vali Asr Square, reports Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.

Many are wearing black in mourning for those killed in earlier protests. Protesters want to go to Tehran University later to mourn the killing on Sunday of students in a dormitory.

Reuters says that "tens of thousands" of people are protesting.
One street leading to the square was packed for several kilometres, witnesses said.

Most of the protesters were silent and making victory signs. Some are holding pictures of those killed.

The authorities say the rally is banned.

(That's it from me, Matthew Weaver, my Washington colleague Daniel Nasaw will be taking over. Thanks again for your comments, please keep them coming).

4.28pm:
Thanks Matt. Daniel Nasaw in Washington here, taking over. If you are reading this in Iran and have news, please email me at daniel.nasaw@guardian.co.uk

Robert Tait reports that a centrist website has found that voter turnout in at least 30 towns exceeded 100%.

In the most specific allegations of rigging yet to emerge, the centrist Ayandeh website – which stayed neutral during the campaign – reported that 26 provinces across the country showed participation figures so high they were either hitherto unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered electors.
Taft, a town in the central province of Yazd, had a turnout of 141%, the site said, quoting an unnamed "political expert". Kouhrang, in Chahar Mahaal Bakhtiari province, recorded a 132% turnout while Chadegan, in Isfahan province, had 120%.

4.32pm:
A friend of the Guardian in Tehran writes that her Gmail account has been filtered, and that her internet service provider said it has been ordered to cut all emails, messaging software and many websites, especially foreign news outlets.

"So back to the good time of the revolution of 1979!" she writes, tongue in cheek. "We should [be] finding new ways to follow events."

3.47pm:
The official Iranian Republic News Agency reports that Gholamali Hadadadel, head of the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, has invited Mir Hossein Mousavi to participate in a televised debate Friday on controversy surrounding last Friday's vote, our Tehran correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes.

4.48pm:
This photo, reportedly of a student killed by regime security forces, has been emailed around Iran today with no source attribution. Caution: It is gruesome.

4.51pm:
Saeed reports that Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard today joined injured students at Tehran University, and condemened violence by the government and riot police.

Also, Mousavi has written a letter (in Farsi) to the Iranian security council saying that personnel from the Ahmadinejad-loyalist Basij militia are doffing their uniforms and attacking innocent people in the streets.

Thanks Saeed for the translation and the dispatches.

5.13pm:
An email correspondent says that www.iranproxy.org and www.oghab.org provide anonymous Twitter relay service for Iranians "on the ground".

Caveat: I can neither verify the correspondent's identity nor vouch for him.

5.23pm:
Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall wonders when Barack Obama will weigh in behind the anti-regime protesters.

5.35pm:
Saeed writes that protestors in the streets of Tehran are carrying placards that read "Annulment of the election is our right" -- a play on Ahmadinejad's slogan "Nuclear power is our right".

5.38pm:
On the Twitter proxy sites, which I mentioned in my 5.13pm post, reader Paul emails:

I wouldn't trust a thing that comes out of those accounts.
Even if they work as advertised (which, in fact, they seem to and I have written an identical PHP script myself before - it's very simple) there is no way whatsoever to verify anything coming from them. I suspect they are a magnet for the frivolous and the deceptive.

5.46pm:
CNN is reporting that the Revolutionary Guard said it will prosecute websites that are inciting unrest.

5.55pm:
AP reports that the Iranian government has accused the US of "intolerable" meddling in Iranian affairs and of fueling post-election strife.

A state television channel in Iran says the government summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, to complain about American interference. The two countries broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. An English-language state-run channel quoted the government as calling Western interference "intolerable."

President Barack Obama has spoken cautiously about the situation in Iran (and provoked criticism from the American right, which wants more strident denunciations of the regime), saying that it would not be helpful for him to be seen as meddling.

Yesterday Obama said:

When I see violence directed at peaceful protestors, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it's of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people... I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past, and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy. How that plays out over the next several days and several weeks is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide.

6.15pm:
Iranian filmmakers Marjane Satrapi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf have held a press conference in Brussels to say they have a document proving election fraud, Adnkronos news agency reports.

The document, seen here, says that Mousavi won the election with 19m votes, with cleric Mehdi Karroubi coming in second and Ahmadinejad coming in third. Satrapi and Makhmalbaf said the document had come from the Iranian electoral commission, and is dated 13 June, the day after the election.

Adnkronos notes it cannot confirm the document's authenticity.

Satrapi, an artist, is best known for "Persepolis", her beautiful and insightful graphic-novel memoir of the 1979 revolution, which was turned into a film. Makhmalbaf is known in the US and Europe for writing and directing "Kandahar".

6.29pm:
Pro-Mousavi forces on the internet are urging supporters to cry out "Allah-o-Akbar" ("God is great" in Arabic) at 10 pm, 11 pm and midnight tonight from the rooftops.

6.54pm:
Guardian's at-large America editor Michael Tomasky touches on conservative complaints that Obama hasn't spoken out forcefully enough in favour of the demonstrators in the streets:

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can exploit any interfering comments by Obama to win support from a population that can be easily whipped into an anti-US frenzy.

6.59pm:
On Comment is free, David Mattin writes that diaspora Iranians who were hesitant about voting in the election are eagerly helping spread news from the country on the internet.

7.08pm:
This photo of today's protests has been going around the internet today.

7.16pm:
The US state department rebutts the Iranian allegation that it is meddling in the post-election.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley responded to the allegation by telling reporters that the U.S. is withholding judgment about whether last week's presidential election was conducted fairly. He said the U.S. is not interfering in Iranian internal affairs.

That's from AP. If I get a state department memo with more information I will post it.

7.19pm:
Here is our latest update on day five of the massive Tehran protests.

7.48pm:
We've just posted a new photo gallery and video montage from the Tehran protests.

8.28pm:
Robert Tait analyses Ayatollah Ali Khamanei's role in the government and his reaction to the unrest in the streets. He writes:

Large segments of the crowds who have gathered to protest against the result see Khamenei rather than Ahmadinejad as their true adversary.

For an excellent analysis of Khamenei's authority and his positions on Islam, the US, Israel and the religious character of the Islamic Republican, check out Karim Sadjadpour's autumn 2008 paper for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

8.56pm:
Guardian Diplomatic Editor Julian Borger writes that the Iranian regime's media crackdown and efforts to block electronic communications in and out of the country call into question the assumption that youth protest movements can use the internet to stay a step ahead of the authorities.

9.06pm:
On Comment is free, Chris Emery writes that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has limited the range of possible actions by endorsing Ahmadinejad, and that the offer of a partial recount has backfired by encouraging the protesters.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Obama and the pantheon of cool

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

While the internet swoons over his fly-swatting prowess, how does Obama compare to other political and cultural icons?

Barack Obama's ability to swat a fly during a television interview seems, judging by the hits the video has been getting, to have confirmed his status as one of the coolest people on the planet. But how cool is he really?

Imagine, if you will, a mythical pantheon of the coolest people of all time and ask yourself: would Obama be among them? And, if not, who deserves a place ahead of him?

You'd have to include the towering presence of Nelson Mandela, who has fighting an epic battle against racism in apartheid South Africa on his CV – plus a very nice line in flamboyant shirts.

Perhaps not as natty a dresser was Winston Churchill, whose wartime leadership, stirring oratory and penchant for cigars and victory symbols, have made him an icon of the 20th century. The French, meanwhile, may make the case for Joan of Arc, who presumably would have made rather short work of Obama's fly.

Then there is the cultural competition. On the big screen has anyone surpassed Clint Eastwood – especially while wearing a poncho and a mean stare that would still the heart of the most ruthless bandido?

Glamour-wise, who could compare with the wondrous Audrey Hepburn? Then there's the sporting icons – I'll throw two into the pot for starters. When I think about sporting cool I think Gary Sobers, the sublime West Indian all-rounder who was the first to hit six sixes from one over, and Steve Ovett, whose oddball persona was so much cooler for this young sports fan than that of his polished rival Sebastian Coe.

And finally from the music world I give you Ian Brown, Patti Smith and the young Elvis Presley. Beat that.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Guardian Daily podcast Blair knew of secret policy that led to torture plus Iranian protesters defy bloody crackdown

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

The Guardian reveals today that when he was prime minister, Tony Blair knew of the existence of a secret interrogation policy that effectively led to British citizens and others being tortured. Ian Cobain has the details.

In Iran, in the face of a bloody government crackdown, opposition supporters are gathering in cities across Iran today in a sixth day of protests against last week's disputed election. Our diplomatic editor, Julian Borger, says the demonstrations are set to continue - amid signs of divisions within the regime. Foreign affairs specialist Simon Tisdall says events in Iran create difficulties for the US president, Barack Obama.

Parliament publishes details of MPs' expenses today. Nicholas Watt, our chief political correspondent, says attention will be focused on what we wouldn't have known if it hadn't been for the Daily Telegraph.

In Belfast, more than 100 Romanian nationals are planning to leave the country after they were driven from their homes by racist thugs. Henry McDonald, our Ireland correspondent, says the attacks were orchestrated.

Iran protests live 18 June 2009

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Another huge demonstration is expected today in defiance of the regime after, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi called for a day of silent protest to mourn the victims of the unrest. Follow live updates on the aftermath of Iran's disputed elections

7.30am:
Here's a round up of the latest developments.

• Hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets for the fifth consecutive day yesterday - in the worst unrest since the 1979 revolution.
• There have been mass arrests of prominent reformists in an apparent attempt to decapitate the opposition movement.
• Six members of Iranian football team are believed to be in deep trouble after wearing green wrist bands in support of the opposition movement.
• Mousavi has called for protests in mosques to mourn those killed earlier in the week.
• President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed the turnout in the election was "great challenge to the west's democracy". He added: "The ideals of the Islamic Revolution were the winners of the election."

7.50am:
Facebook user Abbas Afshari has a great collection of photos from the latest protests including those carrying placards mourning the death of those killed in the unrest.

8am:
There have been more arrests of reformists, according to the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights.

It reports that those seized include former foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi, general secretary of Nehzat e Asadi or Freedom Movement or Iran.

He was arrested while in the intensive care unite of the Pars Hospital in Tehran, it says.

Mohammadreza Jalaieepour, a student at Oxford University, was arrested on yesterday at Tehran Airport, as he was about to leave Iran.

"Is it a crime to support Mousavi? That's my only question now," his father Hamid-Reza Jalaipour told the BBC.

Amnesty reports that Ghaffari Farzadi, a leading member of the Iran Freedom Movement and a lecturer at Tabriz University, was also arrested.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said other people who have disappeared or been arrested include: Saeed Hajjarian, an advisor to former president Mohammad Khatami, paralyzed in an assassination attempt in 2000; Mohammad Tavasoli, the director of the political office of the Freedom Movement of Iran; human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani; human rights activist Shiva Nazarahari; journalist Mahsa Amrabadi; a former spokesperson for Khatami, Abdolah Ramezanzadeh; politician Mostafa Tajzadeh; political activists Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mohammad Atrianfar, and Mohammad Tavasoli; Freedom Movement members Ahmad Afjeiee, Emad Bahavar, Mojtaba Khandan, Saieed Zeraatkar, Rouholah Shafiee, Ali Mehrdad, and Mohammad-Reza Ahmadinia; members of the reformist Islamic Participation Front: Ali PourKhayeri, Shahin Nourbakhsh, Ali Taghipour Mohammad Shokuhi, Ashkan Mojaleli, Maysam Varahchehre, Mahdieh Minavi, and Farhad Nasrollahpour; members of the Central Council of the University Alumni group ADVAR - general secretary Ahmad Zaydabadi, Hadi Kahal and Hamed Iranshahi; activists Payam Haydar Ghazvini, Nasim Riahi, Mojtaba Rajabi, and Atar Rashidi in Ghazvin province.

The campaign for press freedom, Reporters without Borders, has details of the arrests and expulsions of journalists. It also has hotline for journalist in danger in Iran ((33) 1 4777-7414)

8.25am:
As there are so many restrictions on journalists in Iran it is difficult to get information, so if you are in Iran and have news, please email me at matthew.weaver@guardian.co.uk or post updates in the comments section below.

8.30am:
The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Julian Borger discusses the opposition movement's "stamina, resilience and flexibility" in the face of the crackdown. He also analyses divisions in the regime and forecasts what might happen at Friday prayers.

And Simon Tisdall discusses Barack Obama's response to the protests.

8.40am:
Today's protest in memory of those who have been killed is in Imam Khomeini Square, in south Tehran, writes our Tehran correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan.

8.45am:
If the election result was annulled and Mousavi declared the winner that could spark ugly scenes according to Iranian expert Chris Emery.

"An annulment of the election would also bring Ahmadinejad's supporters on the streets in huge numbers and potentially see as much, or even more, disruption and violence on the streets," he writes.

9.10am:
Time for a cartoon round up. Here's the latest from Nikahang Kowsar, the popular Iranian cartoonist. There were no cartoons by him yesterday, which made me concerned for his safety. But there was no need to worry, I've now discovered he lives in Canada.

Here's Steve Bell's take: Ahmadinejad as a pygmy on the world's stage. The US cartoonist JD Crowe depicts Ahmadinejad at a blood stained ticker-tape parade. And here's a Twitter related cartoon on the Washington Note.

9.30am:
Someone from Iran, who wished to remain anonymous has contacted me to say that a coalition of clerics, which including Khatami, Abtahi and the influential ayatollah Khoyeneha have announced full suport for Mousavi.

The emailer, citing Mousavi's website, Ghalamnews, says the group has asked for either the election to be anulled or for an investigation into claims of fraud. They have also asked the interior ministry for a permit to demonstrate on Saturday between Revolution and Freedom squares, when Mousavi is expected to make a speech.

9.40am:
My colleague Simon Jeffery has been comparing the official votes in this election with the last poll in 2005.

9.45am:
State-run Press TV reports that eight people have been killed in the protests so far. The opposition movement fears the number of deaths is higher.

It quotes an aide of Mousavi, denying that the "post-election rioters" were Mousavi supporters.

9.50am:
The Middle East analyst Juan Cole, president of the Global Americana Institute, explains the symbolism of today's protest and significance of mourning martyrs in Shia culture.

Writing on his blog he says: "The repertoires of protest the reformists are using echo those of the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution - they are chanting "God is Great," mourning pious fallen martyrs, etc - another sign that this movement is not just alienated secularised elites."

He adds: "In 1978 such demonstrations for those killed in previous demonstrations grew in size all through the year, till they reached an alleged million in the streets of Tehran. Since the reformists are already claiming Monday's rally was a million, you wonder where things will go from here."

10.15am:
This video claims to show yesterday's silent protest. If the date is correct, it illustrates the massive scale of the demonstration.

10.20am:
There are reports on Twitter that today's rally will only be at Tupkhaneh Square at 4pm (12.30BST) and that Mousavi will attend.

10.40am:
US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has denied Iranian allegations that the US is interfering in the crisis, according to Reuters.

"The people of Iran reserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted. It is for the Iranians to determine how they resolve this internal protest" over the election outcome," she said.

10.45am:
The New York Times's Lede blog has spotted a list of Twitter users with possible links to the Iranian security services.

If true this would suggest that the image of "Digital David" fighting "theocratic Goliath" painted by Timothy Garton Ash today might need updating. Is Goliath getting tech savvy?

11am:
This is one of the latest pictures being circulated on TwitPic.

11am:
The guardian council has agreed to meet the defeated opposition candidates on Saturday to hear their complaints about election, according to al-Jazeera reports.

State radio announced the move, according to Reuters.

Al-Jazeera also says a few hundred people have gathered outside the UN offices in Tehran.

11.15am:
The news website IranMania has decided to stop publishing political news, over concerns for the safety of its staff. In a letter to readers it says: "For the past few days, it has become virtually impossible to provide independent news from official sources, we have therefore taken the decision to stop the reporting all political news stories. We are sure that you appreciate that our primary concern is the safety of our staff."

11.20am:
"Where is my vote?" ask banners held by many of the street demonstrators, writes Robert Tait, our former reporter in Tehran.

According to a correspondent who has emailed Balatarin website, a lot of them are lying dumped by a roadside on the way to Damavand, east of Tehran.
He says that around 1,000 completed ballots were found there and when people discovered them by the side of the road there was a mass grab for them. Apparently people were picking up 20 or so at a time. He says he was able to grab five.
Balatarin has published a picture of one which clearly shows a vote for Mohsen Rezai, the conservative candidate, and a stamp to authenticate it.
The correspondent says that the ballot papers all showed traces of having been neatly folded, indicating that they were legally cast ballots. It's yet more circumstantial evidence that something fishy has happened.

11.25am:
The search engine Google is being urged to change its logo to this for one day as a mark of respect for those who died.

11.50am:
According to AUTNews, a student website, the entire chemistry department at Tehran's Sharif university - one of the country's most prestigious institutions - has resigned en mass in objection to "the recent crimes and attacks", writes Robert Tait.

Some 120 lecturers at Tehran university and academic staff at Amir Kabir university had already resigned. It almost seems a cliche to say so, but these sort of protests evoke yet more echoes of the revolution.

12.05pm:
The reformist Association of Combatant Clerics has made a formal request to a hold pro-Mousavi rally on Saturday, says Press TV thus confirming an email we reported earlier.

The Iranian news agency Payvand has a large selection of photographs from the most recent protests.

12.30pm:
This is a really interesting video and a marked contrast to the violent ones I've been watching for the last few days. It shows protesters enjoying what looks like friendly banter with members of the police.

Mousavi1388, who posted it, labels it: "Police and Crowd Iran Hand in Hand - a crucial moment."

(Apologies for referring earlier to the police as basij - I've corrected the mistake. As Ian Black points out the basij militia don't wear uniforms).

1.25pm:
The guardian council has received complaints about 646 different violations in the electoral process, according to state's Press TV. The complaints were made by three defeated candidates: Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei.

The guardian council has agreed to meet the candidates to discuss their concerns.

1.35pm:
New video has emerged of chanting Mousavi supporters at a packed metro station and inside a train carriage. They are apparently making fun of Ahmadinejad.

1.50pm:
The Conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaei has asked those who voted for him to send in their national ID numbers, according to a contact in Iran. So far he said to have received 200,000 more numbers than the votes he won in the official results.

2pm:
Al-Jazeera reports that tens of thousands of people are gathering for a silent demonstration in Tehran.

'H' from Tehran sent this before going out on today's demonstration.

The whole system has been surprised by the volume of people protesting against its president. The government cannot tolerate more demands from the people and I believe more bloodshed is possible.
Nobody knows what could happened next. We must go to a new protest in Tehran today. Mousavi has called for the demonstration to be held in memory of the eight people who lost their lives on June 15th.
Pray for peace, pray for freedom, pray for Iran

2.40pm:
The numbers at today's rally are hard to gauge, but our correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan, reckons there could be as many as one million people there.

I just spoke to him on a fairly good phone line from Tehran.

He said the demonstration is bigger than Monday's rally. Many are wearing black and carrying photos of those who died. Some are carry placards calling for a new election not a recount. The shops on the route are closed in support of the rally, he added.

Saeed pointed out that the rally has taken in place in South Tehran where Ahmadinejad claimed to have had a lot of support.

3pm:
Some new footage claiming to show today's rally has been posted to YouTube.

This is from the same YouTube user.

3.20pm:
Appeal for pictures and information: if you have taken any pictures of the latest events in Iran, or know anyone who has, please send them to pictures@guardian.co.uk. Please provide as much information as you can about your pictures including what they show, and when and where they were taken. If you have spotted any interesting website with more information, please post a link in the comments section below. Thanks.

3.35pm:
Protesters have resorted to scrawling "where's my vote" on banknotes, according to these photos.

3.50pm:
Ali (not his real name) is a 26-year-old Phd student who has been in Britain for the past 10 years and who voted for Mousavi, has been talking to my colleague Mark Tran.

I plan to go back in a week. I am filled with trepidation but this is too important for me not to go back. Some of my fellow students, about six or seven, have already gone back to show solidarity with the demonstrators.
We have people here who are hacking into the government's computers and state organisations such as Fars and other Revolutionary Guard news outlets.
We've got an information loop going as the government tries to fragment communications networks. People send messages to us via Twitter and Facebook and we disseminate the information back into Iran, it's like an endless game. Many hundreds of us have been demonstrating every evening outside the Iranian embassy.
Most of the students here actually supported Mehdi Karroubi. He was the biggest figure for the students because he was strongly in favour of civil liberties, freedom of speech and rule of law. He is the one with the support of lots of intellectuals in Iran.
I backed Mousavi because I thought he was the most pragmatic figure, someone who could work with the Majlis (parliament). Those who are playing the protest movement down are dead wrong, there are just too many who are angry. There are lots of people who voted for the first time, including my parents (in Tehran) who realised that it was apathy that allowed Mahmound Ahmadinejad to get into power last time.
People who voted thought they could bring about change and now they feel they've been robbed. This is a coup.
People are willing to shed their blood and people already have. My cousin who works in a hospital in Tehran has seen a 15-year-old child stabbed to death and another child who was shot. The regime is relying on the Basij militia to do its dirty work, but the security forces are less willing to do its bidding.
Mousavi is trying to replicate Khomeini's strategy by winning over the soldiers, by putting flowers into their guns. We need to see the movement spread, for example to see oil workers go on strike.
I will work with Mowj Sevvom - the Third Wave (a coalition of reformists that supports Mousavi) when I get back. I'll see what I can do but I'm not sure there'll be anything left by the time I get there. It might be all over.

4pm:
Iran's state-run Press TV reports that "hundreds of thousands" of protesters have take part in "peaceful rallies".

It reported that Moussavi briefly attended the rally and called for restraint.

(That's it from me today. My colleague in Washington Daniel Nasaw is about to take over.)

4.16pm:
Thanks Matt. Daniel Nasaw in Washington here. If you are in Iran and have news items or tips, please email me at daniel.nasaw@guardian.co.uk. You can also follow me on Twitter at danielnasaw.

Agar dar Iran hastid va akhbar daarid, beh man benevisid. Inglisi besyar e vali farsi kami baladam.

4.26pm:
A dispatch from our correspondent Robert Tait:

Fars News, a revolutionary guards-linked site loyal to Ahmadinejad, is quoting an "informed source" as saying that a son and daughter of former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani - thought to be engaged in a power struggle with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - have been banned from leaving the country. Faezeh and Mehdi Rafsanjani are said to have "organised and provoked some illegal demonstrations and acts of destruction" during recent days.

From Reuters:

Rafsanjani's daughter Faezeh addressed supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi on Tuesday when they gathered near the state television building in Tehran in defiance of a ban on opposition protests.

Meanwhile, Hadi Ghaemi, of the international campaign for human rights in Iran, is reporting that the former foreign minister, Ebrahim Yazdi - arrested yesterday at Tehran's Pars hospital - has been taken back into hospital because his condition is said to be "critical". Yazdi, a former aide to the Ayatollah Khomeini, is arguably the most significant figure to be detained in this week's mass round-ups. Yazdi was held at Evin prison. Ghaemi cites Yazdi's son.

4.29pm:
Our man in Tehran, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, says Mousavi joind the silent protesters at 6pm local time while supporters shouted: "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein". He continued his way to Ferdowsi Sq. Helicopters of police were whirling up Imam Khomeini square and people were flashing the victory sign at them.

4.44pm:
An email correspondent, citing what he says is a reliable twitter feed, sends me Mousavi's address to the protesters. Caveat: This is not necessarily a direct quote, since it would be second hand and translated from the Farsi, and I have no confirmation of its accuracy.

I have come due to concerns of current political and social conditions -- to defend the rights of the nation.
I have come to improve Iran's international relations.
I have come to tell the world and return to Iran our pride, our dignity, our future.
I have come to bring to Iran a future of freedom, of hope, of fulfilment.
I have come to represent the poor the helpless the hungry.
I have come to be accountable to you my people and to this world.
Iran must participate in fair elections, it is a matter of national importance.
I have come to you because of the corruption in Iran.
Twenty-five percent inflation means ignorance, thieving, corruption. Where is the wealth of my nation?
What have you done with $300bn in last 4 years? Where is the wealth of the nation?
The next government of Iran will be chosen by the people.
Why do all our young want to leave this country?
I know of no creation who places himself ahead of 20m of the nation.
We are Muslims: what is happening in the Iranian government is a sin.
This government is not what Imam Khomeini wanted for Iran.
I will change all this!
This is the sea of green!

5.06pm:
An internet traffic analyst has an interesting look at the drop-off in net traffic inside Iran since Saturday, when the Iranian regime began restricting access inside the country.

On the day after the elections on June 13th at 1:30pm GMT (9:30am EDT and 6:00pm Tehran / IRDT), Iran dropped off the Internet. All six regional and global providers connecting Iran to the rest of the world saw a near complete loss of traffic.

5.11pm:
Here are some fantastic photographs from our man in Tehran, Saeed Kamali Dehghan. He took them at the protest at Imam Khomeini square.

5.20pm:
Here are some photos of Mousavi addressing the protest at Imam Khomeini Square today.

5.30pm:
As we reported earlier, prominent dissident Dr Ebrahim Yazdi of the Iran Freedom Movement has been returned under guard to Pars Hospital, where he was undergoing treatment for complications from prostate cancer.

I have written a bit more information about him and his movement.

5.33pm:
The terrific blog over at the National Iranian American Council reports that Basiji militiamen who have been seen beating and harassing pro-Mousavi protesters are now covering their faces -- for fear of retaliation.

5.38pm:
Reader Morteza sends this picture he says were taken in Isfahan yesterday of supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi in Naghsh Jahan square.

UPDATE AND CAVEAT:

Another reader tells me he thinks the photo was taken last week in Isfahan, before the election, when Khatami addressed a Mousavi rally.

Guardian readers: This illustrates the trouble we in the western news media are having. We have to rely on unconfirmed reports, images and videos that are virtually impossible to verify.

SECOND UPDATE: Reader Morteza checked, and confirmed this image is from last week.

5.44pm:
The Guardian's Robert Tait writes that the people in the streets are throwing Ahmadinejad's "dirt and dust" insult back at him:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's taste for contemptuous putdowns has rebounded against him and energised his opponents after he dismissed those protesting against his re-election as "dirt and dust".
The description has entered the folklore of street demonstrations against the official outcome of last Friday's poll and inspired at least two pithy slogans throwing the president's words back in his face.
"Dirt and dust is you, it is you who are the enemy of Iran," one chant goes.
Another frequently heard slogan is: "We are not dirt and dust, we are Iran's nation."

6.07pm:
Robert Tait and Saeed Kamali Dehghan report from Tehran:

The powerful guardian council said it would convene an extraordinary session on Saturday to hear allegations of vote-rigging from the opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and two other also-rans in last Friday's elections who were, according to official results, defeated by the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
However the gesture had no impact on the momentum of opposition protests, which have overrun the streets of the capital this week. This afternoon, Mousavi re-emerged to lead another massive manifestation by tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people, many dressed in black and carrying candles that they lit as night fell to commemorate those killed in a week of confrontation.

6.24pm:
A reader in Tehran reports that Iranian state television has begun a campaign to discredit Mousavi reporters by portraying them as unpatriotic trouble makers. This would follow Ahmadinejad's characterisation of the pro-Mousavi forces in the streets as "dirt and dust".

The television station has been asking people on the street about the effect the demonstrations have had on their lives. All interviewees condemn the protests as disruptive and violent.

About an hour ago, former Iranian Majlis (parliament) speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel criticised Mousavi on state television for staging what he said were illegal demonstrations.

"Not a word of condemnation for plain clothed forces who ransacked the dormitories and killed at least five students," my source writes.

If anyone else is in Iran watching state television and can confirm this report or add to it, please email me at daniel.nasaw@guardian.co.uk or twitter me at danielnasaw.

6.40pm:
Just after 10 pm in Iran, Saeed writes that the people are again shouting "Ya Hossein! Mir Hossein!" and "Allah-o-Akbar!" (Arabic for "God is Great!") all across Tehran.

6.44pm:
Here is some grainy but fantastic footage of the march to Imam Khomeini square in Tehran, from 5 pm Iranian time.

You can hear the crowd chanting "Ya Hossein! Mir Hossein!"

6.49pm:
Mir Hossein Mousavi supporter has a piece of green cloth tied to her thumb as a rally takes place in Tehran. Note the woman is wheelchair bound, and hardly the type of young university student associated with the pro-Mousavi movement.

6.53pm:
The Guardian's Middle East Editor Ian Black notes that Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not been seen publicly since Monday, when he traveled to Russia for a conference:

Analysts and diplomats say that the fact that Ahmadinejad has not been seen for three days as street protests and political turmoil rage suggests his position may have been weakened. Rallies backing him have been far less well attended than those organised by the Mousavi camp.

7.05pm:
Mir Hossein Mousavi's Ghalam News website is back online with some campaign-style photographs of his address to protesters at Imam Khomeini Square in Tehran earlier. Note the image of the Imam himself at the top of the page -- an effort to persuade moderates and conservatives that they should not consider Mousavi an enemy of the Iranian Republican or a radical.

7.15pm:
More shots of the rally from Mousavi's Ghalam News website.

7.21pm:
Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall writes on the longtime rivalry between Mousavi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which stems from the early days of the Islamic Republic and their policy clashes on economic management, the conduct of the Iraq war, and the extent to which Iran should open up to western companies when postwar reconstruction began.

In the event that the divisive Ahmadinejad were to be dropped and Mousavi became president, his 25-year-long battle with Khamenei can be expected to resume in earnest. That is a strong reason for Khamenei to fight hard to keep him out. But while the warring cousins differ sharply on social issues, there may be more room for an accommodation than many suspect.

7.52pm:

A Youtube clip purportedly of the wreckage inside Tehran University, where reformist students were attacked by Basiji militiamen and police this weekend. It really looks like someone went on a rampage. The footage of the knocked-over bookshelves is particularly distressing.

8.00pm:
This website lists phone numbers for top officials in the Iranian government and asks people outside Iran only to call to discuss the elections. Thanks to the National Iranian American Council for spotting it.

It is 11:30 pm in Tehran right now so I figure no one will answer the phone. But if any Guardian reader calls tomorrow, please write to me and let me know what they say.

8.21pm:
Here is a fun photo of a statue of the great Persian poet Ferdowsi with a green scarf wrapped around his neck during a pro-Mousavi demonstration. The photo was shot in Tehran's Ferdowsi Square. Ferdowsi wrote the "Shahname", or "Book of Kings", considered Iran's national epic.

9.04pm:
A spreadsheet and PDF document from the Iranian Ministry of the Interior lists election results by province and county. The webpage with the downloads is here.

9.26pm:
Mehdi Karroubi's political party Ettemad Melli has cancelled its Friday demonstration and will instead march Saturday at 4 pm from Enghelab Square to Azadi Square in Tehran.

9.41pm:
Guardian writers Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Robert Tait preview Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speech at Friday prayers tomorrow.

They say he is expected to combine a call for calm tomorrow with a warning of severe consequences if protests continue over last week's "stolen" presidential election.

Khamenei's address, to be made during Friday prayers at Tehran University, will be carefully scrutinised for clues as to how the Islamic regime plans to proceed a week after the disputed poll triggered the worst unrest since the 1979 revolution.

9.53pm:
A group of bereaved Iranian mothers and families of the people beaten and imprisoned in the recent protests writes a letter to the Ulema, the chief clerics in Qom. They plead for advice and, it seems, implore them to intercede.

Thanks Bavand in Tehran for the translation and annotation of the most important selections:

'We're from God and we return to him.' [A verse from the Koran with which Mousavi started one of his recent statements, for it is
considered very powerful and usually used at the time of mourning. It conveys that one is not afraid of death, so it can also be threatening]
'O, you Ulema [chief clerics], save Islam!' [A quote from Imam Khomeini]
To whom should we plead, we mothers of this country? Today, that our
daughters and sons in universities, dormitories, alleys and streets are slapped in the face and killed or beaten with electic batons, sticks and mace, and lose their lives. This is while they have stepped in to resist and defend their rights, their vote and the nation's vote.
Dear Ulema, to whom should we plead when all this injustice is perpetrated in
the name of religion and Islam? What can we do, we who have brought up our children with the love of God and Islam and taught them to resist tyranny as [Shia saint] Hossein did, and today? Exactly when they are carrying out these teachings, they have become the target of attacks by those who claim to be pious.
What is with the Islamic Republic that it is devouring its own children and what can we do, we who are devoted to this revolution and its sublime ideals, but at the same time, cannot watch in silence when the rights of the people and the Ummat is trampled underfoot?
'For what sin were they killed?' [This is a verse from Koran, seen frequently these days in the demonstrations. It originally addressed the pagan Arabs who buried their daughters alive. It is repeated many times in this text in original Arabic.]
We have learnt that the houses of Ulema was historically a refuge for the oppressed and in this critical historical moment, we want to convey this to our children who understand, better than ever, the difference between pure Mohammedan Islam and the Islam of Taliban.
Today the youth should come under the protection of Islam, and the authentic people's movement and their glorious presence (which increases the legitimacy of the regime) should be recognized or else tyrannising the oppressed will have a severe repercussions for the government and the people.

10.16pm:
CNN's Christiane Amanpour says the Iranian regime's conservative leadership is fracturing over how to respond to the demonstrations.

Interesting bits:

Iran's influential parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani on Thursday blamed the Interior Ministry for a bloody crackdown on civilians, including students at Tehran University, after Monday's protests.

She notes that Larijani is allied with Khamenei.

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Is your MP an expensegrasping rascal?

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Matthew Taylor checks up on his MP – but is left frustrated by what the black markers cover up

Follow the latest news on our live blog

After weeks of hearing what a rotten lot of expense-grasping rascals MPs are, the general public can finally have a look for themselves today after their claims were published officially online. Just tap in your postcode at a site such as this one to get the name of your MP and then look them up on this parliament.co.uk page.

The information is quite heavily redacted but a quick look through the page on my MP, Labour's Diane Abbott, of Hackney North and Stoke Newington, reveals her penchant for Twinings tea (three packets for £11.97 on one receipt) – which, compared with a £1,600 duck island, looks like relatively small beer.

My blood is ready to boil with fury but an initial scan through her claims appears to reveal only humdrum things such as 300 business cards (green) at £219 and the regular hire of a conference room at £35 an hour – and not even the hint of any moat cleaning.

It appears that from what has been released this morning that the long-standing east London MP will not be forced to issue a public apology like some of her disgraced colleagues. However, officials' liberal use of black marker pen means it is difficult to be sure.

Many of the documents look like top-secret CIA files, with whole sections blacked out. In Abbott's case, hundreds of pounds have been paid out but we do not know why. On one form she claimed £50 for "chauffeur services" but all other details are blanked out. On another, underneath the word "Invoice", is the phrase "To what shall we liken the Kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it". The majority of the rest of the document is blanked out, leaving us in the dark about what expenses Abbott incurred – and why we are paying.

The hidden items are likely to be mundane and the expenses we can see appear to consist of nothing more damning than pens, printing and paper cups. So my initial verdict is that I'd give Abbott a pass.

But is your MP claiming for more explosive items? Click here to find out.

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The Northerner Gangsters relatives sue over villains billboard

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Welcome to the Northerner, guardian.co.uk's weekly roundup of the best of the northern press

Manchester, long a crucible of socialist and anti-establishment thought, has become the battleground for a fresh legal argument over civil rights. This one is dividing lefties across the city, for the alleged victims are criminals and their families.

The Manchester Evening News reports that relatives of two of Manchester's most dangerous gangsters are seeking compensation from the police, claiming their human rights were breached by a series of crime-fighting posters.

Colin Joyce and Lee Amos were jailed earlier this year for gang-related murders. Greater Manchester police marked their conviction with great fanfare, splashing out on a billboard campaign across the city showing the killers alongside artificially-aged pictures of how they could look when they are finally released from prison in 40 years. The campaign also thanked the public for coming forward with evidence that led to their conviction.

The number of shootings in Greater Manchester dropped by 92% after the arrest of the pair. However, relatives of the gangsters say the campaign breached their human rights because they were not told about it and therefore were denied the opportunity to oppose it. The civil rights group Liberty backs the legal action.

The MEN says a letter sent to the police by Liberty claims the posters infringed the relatives' privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. While members of both families were unconnected to the police investigation they claim to have suffered an increase in public hostility following the billboard campaign. The letter asks that GMP admit the campaign was unlawful, agree to take down the posters and pay Amos and Joyce's relatives compensation.

The GMP chief constable, Peter Fahy, told the MEN: "We appreciate that in all we do we have to consider the human rights of all and that a balancing exercise has to be carried out. In this case we were concerned with the ultimate human right – the right to life and this far outweighed any privacy rights.

"These were amongst the most dangerous men in Manchester and our communities are safer with them locked up. We used the poster campaign to drive that message home, and to let young people who may be tempted into gang violence understand the real-life consequences of such actions. We believe the public interest for the campaign was overwhelming."

Gooch gang leader Joyce was convicted of murdering Tyrone Gilbert, 23, and Ucal Chin, 24, trying to murder a third man and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. Amos was convicted of killing Tyrone Gilbert. Both were jailed for life after a six-month trial in which nine other members of the gang were jailed.

James Welch, Liberty's legal director, said: "This case is not about protecting convicted criminals who are safely behind bars but about safeguarding innocent family members who have done nothing wrong. The police should be keeping the peace, not stirring up trouble. Liberty will always protect vulnerable people no matter how unfortunate they are in their family relationships."

The case has predictably sparked passionate debate on the MEN's messageboards. local_lass from Burnage (where Oasis are from, incidentally) asks: "The posters did not name or depict the relatives so how can they be infringing their rights?"

One commenter, who claims to be a relative of Tyrone Gilbert, was "speechless": "After 6 MONTHS of watching these pieces of scum continuously joke, clap, yawn, disregard the judge and shout abuse in the courtroom! Human rights? You need to act accordingly in order to be seen and treated with such."

Read the full background to the case on the MEN's website

ROW OVER SMOKERS' PARADE

Still in Manchester, council bosses and Manchester International Festival organisers are at loggerheads over the inclusion of a cough of smokers and a rev of boy racers (sorry, I may have made those collective nouns up) in the festival's launch parade.

The carnival-style procession – the brainchild of Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller – is partly funded by taxpayers and is supposed to showcase the city's history, traditions and character. However, councillors are appalled at the inclusion of smokers in particular, who are being recruited through advertisements online and in tobacconists, and want the group withdrawn.

Pat Karney, director of Smoke Free Greater Manchester, said: "I find this shocking and unbelievably irresponsible. There will be thousands of children and young people watching this parade. Maybe the artist would like to parade 14 coffins through the streets which is the sum total of people who die from smoking-related illness every day in Greater Manchester."

The event is described by London-born Deller as a "free and uniquely Mancunian procession". Other floats include The Alternative Project, which invites "the young people who inhabit the area outside Urbis" (known to you and me as "goths") to take part; a musical tribute to Oldham's first fish and chip shop, entitled Adoration of the Chip; and the debut of a new piece of music played through the sound systems of modified boy racer-style cars.

Procession organisers are also calling on mill workers, rose queens, ramblers, Happy Mondays fans and descendants of people involved in the 1819 Peterloo massacre to join in. It will last one hour and travel down Deansgate, from Liverpool Road to Manchester cathedral, on 5 July – the opening weekend of the two-and-a-half-week arts extravaganza, which is expected to cost about £9.6m.

PUDDINGFACE FALLS FOR TWEETY PIE

Now, I don't know your feelings on the subject but I can't get my head around Twitter. Or, more accurately, I just can't fathom why it's so popular. I have a Facebook account, which I look at maybe three times a week. I am known for being occasionally prolific with the whole text messaging thing. But constantly logging on to a site for instant 160-character gratification? No.

However (you see, there is a point to this), without Twitter, a Cumbrian teacher would not be about to start a new life in the celebrity spotlight after finding love with the MasterChef TV presenter Gregg Wallace. He's the bald one, that doesn't look like Dr Fox – you know, head like a Spam cannonball.

Heidi Brown, a 27-year-old teacher at Ullswater College in Penrith, plans to move down south after falling for the 44-year-old foodie on Twitter, where, the Cumbria News & Star explains, people leave short messages, or tweets, about what they are doing.

In something of an entertainment scoop for the paper, Brown explains how the couple are enjoying their new life together. "We take walks along the beach together, go out for meals, and play rugby in the garden with Gregg's children. We are just like any couple. Gregg is very outgoing, very kind, and an absolutely wonderful dad. He makes me exceptionally happy."

Brown, from High Hesket, first made contact with Wallace when she responded to a message on his Twitter account, on which he posts under the name PuddingFace, about "jiggling cabbage". She later sent him a message about a description of him in a magazine as a "weird crush". He responded by asking her for lunch when she was next in London.

They met, and she accompanied him to the glamorous Bafta awards. That night, he left another tweet, which read: "Girl on my arm looks amazing".

That was three months ago, and now Brown has handed in her notice and is set to move into Wallace's home in Whitstable, Kent, next month. "I am going to miss Cumbria a lot but I think he is worth it," she says.

POWER SHOWERS

Heavy rain hits Carlisle – video and pictures extravaganza

Mark Smith recommends

The Hypochondriac, Liverpool Playhouse, today to 11 July: one of French playwright Molière's most revived plays, this English Touring Theatre co-production reunites Liverpool poet Roger McGough with director Gemma Bodinetz. Read Lynn Barber's preview here.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Guardian Daily podcast Test of strength for Iran’s supreme leader plus MPs’ expenses

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leads Friday prayers today – with his authority at stake. Ian Black, our Middle East editor, says today is a critical point for the regime.

Edited details of MPs' expenses were published yesterday on parliament's website. Andrew Sparrow, who was sifting through information with Guardian readers on our live blog, shares some highlights.

Four years after the IRA's decision to dispose of its weapons, the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force has taken a significant step towards decommissioning. Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald reports on its significance.

Met Office scientists have produced a map showing how climate change will affect the UK over the next 100 years. Environment correspondent David Adam explains how it will be used.

Michael Bay, the director of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, speaks to Jason Solomons in a clip from our Film Weekly podcast.